Open Minded Skeptic

I was born to a Christian family in the Midwest in the late 1950’s. My parents were members of a small Baptist church in our town, where we attended every service until I married a nice Christian girl just before I turned 20. After a short period of indifference following a church split, my new wife and I began a truth-seeking journey that eventually led us to the point of realization that most of what we had believed was in fact, not true. Over time I hope this blog will tell the story of my journey as well as some of the things I've learned along the way. It is a very difficult thing to let go of your roots, but I'm convinced that for most people, the biggest obstacle to finding the truth is believing that you already have it.

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Fear not (the bully pulpit)

For me it was not a choice to lose my faith.  It was more of a gradual changing of my mind. I never pushed my questioning to the point where I felt I had to make a decision about what I was going to believe.  It was only through hindsight that the distinct changes were revealed.

At the beginning there were huge fears that kept me from allowing myself to be truly open-minded and ask the hard questions.  Fear kept me stuck for quite a long time, but eventually I stopped believing in Hell and began to allow that God was not a tyrant.  Then I was able to really explore with an open mind what God might be like.

I came to see that Christianity is held together in a tension of opposing ideas.  It's a delicate balance between a God of love and a God of terrible power.  I think in modern times in America at least, Christianity has evolved dramatically in favor of the former.  But in the old days, biblical writers revealed the jealous vengeful God who would deal with you harshly if you didn't behave, or even if you were simply born into the wrong family. 

I definitely grew up with a sense of this God, but mostly I was taught about the God of love and grace.  Personal relationship became a key ingredient in this new package being sold.  It seems much more civilized than the God of judgement described in the old testament.

The God revealed in the Old Testament is close-minded, demanding and unfair in his treatment of the humans he had made.  This God is not very popular in America today.  Most believers prefer to see God as a friend.  But this is not the God described in the Bible.  

In Genesis we are told that God demanded every man in Abraham's household be circumcised for reasons unclear to us today.  He destroyed two entire cities for the sins of the inhabitants but saved Abraham's nephew who the very night before had offered up his daughters to be raped by the men of the city.  He devised a cruel test of Abraham's loyalty, demanding that he kill his own son in a sacrificial burnt offering, staying his hand only when Abraham demonstrated his willingness to follow through with the bizarre demand.

In Exodus we are told how God hardened the Pharaoh's heart so that his chosen people could tell their children and grandchildren how harsh and powerful he is (Ex. 10:1-2). Then in the book of Joshua, he once again orders Joshua to circumcise all the males and then to destroy Jericho and all of it's inhabitants, men women and children, except for Rahab the traitor, who had hidden the spies.    

I was taught a sugar coated version of these tales starting at a very young age.  We even sang a song in Sunday school about the destruction of the city of Jericho.  It's certainly an odd way to present genocide to your children.

I have to admit that it had the desired effect.  We sang another song that went... "be careful little hands what you do.  There's a Father up above looking down in tender love..."  The point being, don't piss him off if you want to survive; choose your side carefully.

Today I can't help but notice the striking similarity between this god we sang about as Christian children, and the God of the extreme Muslim Clerics who demand that infidels be destroyed and promise eternal rewards in return for extreme sacrifice.  Wherever this god survives, I no longer fear him.  He is the monster under the bed who only exists in our fears and imagination.

The problem for today's Christian is that their god whom they describe as good and loving, is inextricably connected to this bully from the past.  And they  themselves claim he is unchanging.  

[openmindedskeptic-blog]

What about Jesus?

I had dinner with a friend last week.  My friend has a similar background as me in that he was raised in a Christian family.  He and I were not raised in the same denomination, but we were both taught the core doctrine that Jesus Christ came to earth in order to be the savior of the world.  All that is required is belief in him and you will be saved.  My problem is that I no longer believe, meaning I am no longer a Christian.

My friend is also on a journey away from his roots, although unlike me, he does not say that he is no longer a Christian. However, he will tell you he no longer believes that Christ died for his sins.  To me they are one and the same; but he is not alone.   His approach reminds me of the ‘Occupy Jesus’ blog here on Tumblr.  I think it’s fair to say they simply want to hold on to the teachings of Jesus as a guide to living a good life. Or even that Jesus is a good role model that we can all rally behind.  I do not agree.

I told my friend that, while I agree that Jesus may have said some things that inspire morality (the Golden Rule is a great example), there are many of his sayings that are a little hard to for me to accept.  I couldn't remember specifics when he asked, which prompted me to go back to the Gospels this week, and do a little reading. I’d read the New Testament several times before, but as a committed Christian I think I was conditioned to pretty much accept it as truth, to study it for the purpose of gaining wisdom, not to determine whether it really is what it is claimed to be.  But now that has all changed. 

Today I feel pretty uncomfortable accepting the words of Jesus.  I am not as willing to give slack on the difficult parts.  When I disregard all of the doctrinal spin and take his words at face value, I find much of what he said confusing and sometimes contradictory. It’s hard for me to take Jesus seriously when I look at his teachings objectively.

Although there is sufficient evidence that a person named Jesus indeed lived some 2000 years ago, I have my doubts whether the red letters in my NIV version of the Bible represent much if any of what he actually said.  I think the idea of riding on Jesus coattails as ‘a good role model’ has been around for a long, long time, and some may have used it to their own advantage.

The Gospel of John was the only gospel written by someone who was actually there.  Parts of the other three (known as the synoptic gospels) are written in third person narrative.  For example, we have the story of Jesus’ temptation in Matthew, where Jesus is alone in the desert with Satan.  We are left to guess how the narrator obtained the word for word narrative he records.  We have a similar situation in Luke’s narrative on the birth of Jesus.  Theologians argue that the gospels were written through divine inspiration.  If that is the case, how do you explain the discrepancies and outright contradictions?

Personally I feel it is  better to simply leave the idea of Jesus behind, along with most of the rest of the Bible’s teachings. I feel his ‘words’ have been twisted to the purposes of many, and are therefore unreliable as a whole.  I’ll hold on to all the good ideas he taught for what they are worth, such as the golden rule, along with many other insightful and beneficial ideas.  But in my mind, the Jesus revealed in the gospels has way too much baggage to be a role model.

[openmindedskeptic-blog]

This link will take you to a broadcast of Talk of the Nation on National Public Radio.

[openmindedskeptic-blog]

My middle name is Thomas (doubting Thomas)

Eternity must exist.  Just as mathematics is infinite, so is time and space.  Imagine the biggest number you can think of and add 1 and you have the next bigger number.  Imagine yourself looking back in time some 14 billion years ago to the first second after the big bang.  The sounds and sights are incomprehensible.  The explosion would have been magnificent.  The sound deafening, the colors beautiful and bright beyond anything imaginable to us. And seconds before that you want me to believe there was nothing??

Where did it come from?  All of this energy and movement manifesting itself in sound and color.  What was the cause of all this commotion?  What was going on one second before the big bang?  And what was going on the second before that?  

This has always been the big question.  The Scientist try to explain to you all about what happened seconds after the big bang.  Ask him to tell you what happened just before the bang and he will say he doesn't know.  As far as he knows the big bang was the beginning.  This is his answer to the question, “where did we come from?” and it seems an insufficient answer.  What caused the big bang?

The theologian scoffs at this idea.  He boasts that he has the answer, that God is the answer.  God is eternal, has always been and always will be.  Then one day God created us.  He didn’t take 14 billion years, all he needed was 7 days.  That's because he is all powerful as well as eternal.  (Maybe he had been saving up his power for a really long time.)

Think about it.  According to most Theologians, we are God’s creation, his only creation.  He has been around forever, which is way longer than 10,000 years (that is how long they say we have been around).  I wonder what God was doing all that time?  Maybe there is a correlation between power and time.  Maybe it took all of eternity past to save up enough energy to create the universe?

This may help to explain the flood.  I mean the whole story really makes very little sense.  It only took seven days to create the whole universe complete with one special planet that can sustain life. In that first week, he filled the earth with all the plants and animals and insects, bacteria, the whole enchilada.  All perfectly balanced ecologically.  He was able to set everything up perfectly because he knows everything.  (Either that or because he had all of eternity past to think and plan.)

So he takes his prize creation and puts him in a garden, and in the middle of the perfect garden, he places one tree that can screw up everything.  Ever wonder why he would do such a thing?  Well, every story needs some conflict to provide a little tension.  And since he was all- knowing he knew just how to pull it all off.  Supposedly his plan was air tight.  Theologians tell us that he knew right from the beginning how he would save the day in the end.  And how could he not know, he's all-knowing, right?

So the humans sin, meaning they are going to need a savior.  At first they are not so good at their troublemaking.  All it takes to confound them is to mess up their language so they can’t communicate and build a tower to heaven.  Perhaps this was not the real reason he confounded their language though, because truthfully, why would it matter if they built a tower to heaven?  Five or six thousand years later he would allow this same human race to get all the way to the moon. 

But I digress.  I was trying to explain the flood.  So apparently this language confounding didn’t really work very well.  Not long after these sinning humans had really made a mess of things.  God realized he had made a mistake, wait he doesn’t make mistakes… God changed his mind about this human experiment, wait, he doesn’t change his mind.  At any rate, “the Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain”.  So he decided to wipe man and animals and birds, from the face of the earth.

Fortunately, Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.   So God told him to build this huge ark so that he, his family and all the animals could be saved.  Seems like a convoluted way to save everyone when it had only taken seven days to create the whole universe in the first place.  It only took one day to create man and all the animals. I mean it took him forty days just to flood the whole earth.  And how long do you suppose it took Noah to build that boat.  Must have been hundreds of years, he was 600 years old when the floodwaters came.

God promised Noah he would never do anything like this again, no matter how bad the humans got.  He did wipe out a couple of cities some time later, this time with fire and brimstone. Seems like a much more efficient way to deal with evil, right? Maybe he didn’t know about fire and brimstone back when he thought of the flood.  Wouldn’t it have been easier to just burn all of the evildoers than to take all of the plants and animals out just to get a few million humans? And not nearly as messy.  It must have really stunk after all that water covered all the vegetation for almost a year.  I hate to think about all of the rotting corpses.  He must have recreated all the plant life.  There is no way it could have survived.  Maybe he didn’t have enough power left over to create everything from scratch.  Humans and animals are probably harder than plants and stuff like bacteria.

The theologian isn’t biting on this line though.  He says that God’s ways are mysterious and beyond our ability to comprehend.  Since God knows everything we can assume he has good reasons for the things he does.  But I think it makes more sense that God, if he exists, is not all knowing.  I mean, even the Bible implies that much.  If he knows everything, why would he ever have reason to change his mind?  Was it a rhetorical question when he asked Adam where he was?  Was it Gods plan that Adam and Eve would sin?  Why did he let the builders of the tower of Babel get to the point of being a threat?  Did he know from the start that his plan to confound their language would fail and that he would have to wipe out the entire human race except for one family?  Did he know all that on the 8th day?  

The Bible tells us that God is unchanging, but it also gives us examples of times when God changes.  He changed his mind about creating man.  He changed his mind when Moses appealed to him.  He made new covenants with Israel time and time again.  He definitely is different today according to the theologians, than he was in the Old Testament.  Of course there are some Muslim clerics who claim he is not unlike the God of Moses and Joshua when they claim he wants them to fight holy wars and stone sinners and the like.

Is God static?  Could he be static?  Is it possible that an eternal God could exist all through eternity, never changing or growing because he already knew everything?  Did he change on the first day of creation?  It seems like a pretty big change to go from doing nothing for all of eternity past and then all of a sudden to start creating.  

I have to say it is pretty obvious to me that God, whether he truly exists in all of the claims or not, has changed over the last 5-6 thousand years.  If he truly lives he surely has also grown wiser.  Experience does that to you.  It would seem he is less showy with his power of late if he indeed has the same amount he started with. We haven't seen a real miracle in quite a while.

Jesus said “with God all things are possible” Matthew 19:26. Omnipotent?  What does that mean exactly?  When I was a Christian, I felt that meant that he had more power than anything else and enough to do whatever he thought was appropriate.  Which brings us to the dilemma of why things don’t work a little better?  This is the age old question.  If he has all the power and knows everything, and is good, merciful and loving, how do you explain all of the evil in the world?  Why did he allow Hitler to beat up on his chosen people?   It all seems so contradictory to me.

[openmindedskeptic-blog]

Anecdotal evidence that Christianity is waning

From my perspective, there is a shift taking place in the Evangelical Christian movement.  I cannot tell if it also touches other doctrinal groups such as Catholic and Liberal Christianity.  I have no perspective there.

However, I feel I am not alone in my journey away from Christianity.  There is public evidence such as the book and movie by Carolyn Briggs in which she tells her story of departure from her faith.  There is the book by Frank Schaeffer, “Crazy for God” that has a similar story line albeit from a very different perspective.  Schaeffer came from a prominent Christian home.  His father was a well-known leader in the Evangelical movement.

There are other books such as “A New Kind of Christian” by Brian McLaren, which speaks of a major turn taking place among those who still claim Christianity as their faith in spite of the acknowledged problems they have with it.  Bart Ehrman, a former Christian, wrote a book called “Forged” in which he explains that the Bible’s authors are not who we thought they were.  You have the author Donald Miller, who while still on the Christian side, is challenging the status quo. Rob Bell is another Christian who seems to be trying to reinvent Christianity. 

This is nothing new.  Christianity has found it necessary to reinvent itself many times in the past.  But it does present a bit of a problem.  I was taught that God is ever and always the same.  The same “yesterday, today and forever.” That he is unchanging because he is perfect.  How could anything become more perfect? 

My Christian friends often like to remind me of another thing I was taught growing up in the church.  They say there are no contradictions in the Bible. Whenever you give them an obvious contradiction, they perform amazing gymnastics to explain the inconsistency away.  They always seem to find a way to repack the facts so they make sense to them once again.  But they are simply finding what they are passionately looking for and are blinded by their zeal.

I have personally found that it becomes more difficult to perform the gymnastics the deeper you dig into the facts.  I am talking about the facts as they are given in the Bible itself.  Christianity’s largest asset is that most people do not know the Bible.  Christians are told stories from little on up and are fed sermons that are taken from limited passages, but they are never encouraged to take a comprehensive look at what the Bible says.  If they were to look at it honestly, they would see all of the contradictions.

Robert Wright, is another person raised in Christianity who moved away from his inherited faith as he acquired knowledge about the history of the God of Christianity.  His book was one of the final blows that caused me to abandon my faith.  In his book “The Evolution of God” he recounts the story as told comprehensively by the Bible itself.  He demonstrates through Biblical references that the early Old Testament characters were not monotheistic.  He exposes the fact that the Pentateuch was not written by one author as is generally taught in Sunday School, and that many of the prophetic books were written or revised by multiple authors over large spans of time to allow for necessary changes; huge changes such as the belief in one God rather than the idea of polytheism.  The character of God changes as well, from one who is vengeful and jealous to our current version of a God who is good, loving and merciful; quite a change for someone who is depicted as perfect and changeless.

Ours is not the first period that has challenged the credibility of this God we are taught to obey and love.  When science first began to rear its head it clashed with many of the ideas that have been passed down for generations.  Darwin challenged the idea of creation offering an alternative that proved too distasteful to be taken seriously by many.  Others found the Bible difficult to swallow.  Robert Ingersoll wrote a book way back in 1879 called “Some Mistakes of Moses” that poked fun at some of the ridiculous aspects of the Bible. 

Christianity has survived these attacks mostly because Christians are not even aware of the arguments against their beliefs.  The marginal Christians are not paying attention and the dedicated Christians are taught to flee from the devil, meaning anything that does not line up with Christian belief.

However, I am increasingly aware of more and more people who are no longer buying into the propaganda.  Perhaps it is just because I am there myself that I notice so many other people who are backing away from Christianity.  At any rate I feel it is a good change, and believe it necessary if we are going to continue to evolve as a species.

[openmindedskeptic-blog]

"Faith is pretending" L.T. Jeryl

The other day my parents engaged me in a conversation about faith.  They are concerned for my eternal destiny since I no longer profess to be a Christian.  So they turn the conversation to the subject whenever the slightest opportunity presents itself.

They asked if I believed in things like eternal life and whether Jesus actually existed.  We talked about Noah and the flood, among other things.  I was very honest with them even though I knew that what I was saying was very hard for them.  I told them I wasn't sure about the historical Jesus, but that I felt certain that the biblical flood never happened. 

I gave some really good reasons based on simple logic.  However, whenever I gave them a real showstopper, something that was hard for them to refute intellectually, they would say something like. “Well there are some things you just have to take by faith.”

This is the nuclear option for ‘believers’ of many stripes.  In fact I think the vast majority of people believe it at some level.  It seems to make a little bit of sense at first glance and in certain situations.  For example, I believe in life after death.  I’m pretty convinced that physical death will not be the end of me.  I have some reasons for thinking this is true, but they are not what I would call solid scientific arguments.  Basically I am taking it by faith.

There is no way I can be certain that what I believe is true.  It is impossible.  Perhaps I just like to believe it; perhaps it is something I hold on to just to stay sane or to give me comfort.  People use this kind of thinking in many areas.  Whether you’re a 911 Truther, a health food enthusiast, a religious person or someone who believes in a political ideology... the list goes on.  You may have reasons that help you back your up your position, but if there is no way to prove it, you are taking it by faith. There are just some things we can never be certain about, and uncertainty is hard on us humans.  When we pretend that we do know, it is called faith.

I personally don’t have a problem with people who pretend.  Especially if they admit that their particular belief is more or less a matter of opinion.  I believe it can have many positive effects for them, even if it’s not working for me.  Sometimes a positive attitude can give you an edge against illness or some other negative situation. Perhaps it brings you a little closer to the truth.  Other times it might motivate you to join a cause that brings real meaning to your life.  These are good things for the most part.  The world is often better because of them.

I admit that I have my own faith.  In other words, I believe some things simply because they comfort me or because they bring meaning to my life, or simply because it makes more sense to me than other possibilities.  However, I do try to keep an open mind on these kinds of things.  

I have a problem with folks who seem to insist that I jump on board with them and their faith.  It’s fine if you want to have a friendly discussion about what you believe, even if your motive is to persuade others.  But please don’t insist that there is anything that must be accepted by faith.  Pretending should be optional.

[openmindedskeptic-blog]

[openmindedskeptic-blog]

Dogmatism

After thinking about it for a while I realized that the main reason I don’t want to be associated with atheists or Christians, is because of my general perception of their dogmatism.  It especially annoys me when people act confident concerning things they know little about.  Dogmatic people are usually arrogant and vice-versa. 

Arrogance is ugly on either side of the topic under discussion.  When you are arrogant you tend to become opinionated.  Opinions are a requirement for a thinking person and he will have formed many on a variety of subjects.  But to be opinionated is to stop thinking.  Many opinionated people never started thinking.  They may have opinions on subjects they have never seriously thought about.  They neglect evaluating other ideas because they have already decided what is true.  Dogmatic people are often ignorant of opposing viewpoints. 

It takes an awful lot of effort to discover why you believe the things you do.  Usually we believe we hold to our opinions because they are correct.  In reality many people hold on to beliefs because of biases they are not even aware they have.  

We believe trusted sources.  Our family is usually our first and main source, although it can have a positive or negative affect.  In other words you may grow to believe something because you trust your family who believes it, or you may absolutely reject it because of your lack of trust of them.  The point is that they present to you the specific topics you will have to decide about. The very subject of those decisions can frame a bias. For example, my choices growing up were framed around a specific religion. Because of that, I never really considered any other religion, or for that matter, no religion. Frequently we are exposed early on to only one point of view on a topic. Our choice then is whether to accept or reject that particular point of view, without ever giving adequate consideration to other points of view.

Along my journey away from Christianity, a friend of mine told me that he had decided that from now on he was going to hold his opinions loosely, and he illustrated by holding his arms outstretched, his hands open.  I decided that is a very good approach.  As new information presents itself you need to be willing to re-evaluate your position if you want to grow. You must not fear new information if you want to avoid being dogmatic.

I recommend you start hanging out with people who think differently than you do. You don’t have to dislike someone just because they hold different beliefs than you. Try to find the ones who aren’t arrogant.  Ask them why they hold the opinions they do.  Share with them your point of view.  Try not to share dogmatic opinions as if they are facts.  Ask them questions about why they disagree with you.  You may be surprised at the logic of their answers. Nobody has to change because you do this, but sooner or later everyone involved will in small degrees.  

[openmindedskeptic-blog]

I really don’t like to think of myself as an atheist. I’m not sure why. Perhaps the reasons are similar to the reasons I was always a bit embarrassed to be associated with Christians while I was one. I feel this way about being a part of any group for that matter. When you hook up with a group…

[rasa2013-deactivated20161125]

Hello! Nice post. I like discussing philosophical things, so here’s my reaction :)

Evolution has no direction. There is no such thing as most or least evolved. There are more and less complex life-forms, but that’s just a side-effect of biodiversity. Look at Jellyfish. Their population is exploding and they don’t even have brains. It’s just a numbers game: reproduction and survival to reproduce. In this case, the Jellyfish are probably our fault. 

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the traits we like to see are exactly the traits humans evolved to have (and non-coincidentally, hypothetical Gods seem to have these traits, too: love, jealousy, even consciousness itself). We only like human traits because we’re programmed to like them by culture and genetics.

Furthermore, the tools we have from evolution (like cognition and problem solving) aren’t necessarily complete. Our perception tells us that these tools are sufficient for understanding reality, but to the person living in a box, they can hardly tell that they need more tools to investigate the world outside the box. 

That’s why science exists. It’s meant to help us hone our tools toward the actual production of knowledge, and not our biased understanding of reality (what human could possibly come up with Quantum Physics based on their little box?).

The conclusion that the universe arrived here by non-sentient natural processes (what you really mean by chance) is just rational, nothing more or less. Like I was talking about with evolution and our tools, our emotional tools are not very accurate judges of reality (they’re excellent judges of social reality, which is why we have them, but not physical reality).

So just because one might feel grandeur at the Universe or possession by holy spirits, that doesn’t really mean anything. It tells us more about human nature than about the world.

[openmindedskeptic-blog]

Thanks for your 'reaction'.  I'd like to continue the discussion, starting with your opening statement...

"Evolution has no direction. There is no such thing as most or least evolved. There are more and less complex life-forms, but that’s just a side-effect of biodiversity."

That's a pretty bold statement, and you seem to contradict it multiple times throughout the rest of your reply.  Can a single cell organism mutate directly into a human being?  All the evidence shows that it had to go through countless stages to get from the simplest life form to the most complicated/complex life form known to man.  That seems directional to me.

When you say that the tools we have developed from evolution (cognition and problem solving) are not necessarily complete, why do you assume they will improve, if as you say, there is no direction to evolution?  

I do like your box analogy. In fact it works well for the ideas I am considering.  We need to look outside of the box to see if anything is there.  Just because someone did that thousands of years ago and came up with the unlikely concept of omni-god, does not mean that there is not something out there that does make sense. I like to use another analogy borrowed from an unknown source.

Suppose you are a fish that lives deep in the ocean.  You have developed senses that allow you to experience your world. You may even be of a species that has developed the ability to jump out of the water and see that there is a complete and different environment on the other side of the barrier that we call the surface.  Occasionally species from that environment enter into the ocean briefly to try to make a meal of you.  You may think you are very smart and advanced in your evolutionary state.  But you still know nothing of the forests and the mountains let alone the creatures that may be quite familiar to the bird who tried to eat you.

We may be in a similar situation. There may be life forms 'out there' that our senses are unable to detect.  Perhaps some of us do detect them, and call it religious experience.  Am I saying that God exists?  Not at all.  Just because someone thinks they are communicating with God does not make it so.  They may be imagining it, or they may be communicating with something/someone other than God.

You are right that our perceptions are often more the product of our human experience than a depiction of reality.  Still they are all we have.  It's true that science is supposed to help us look at them more accurately.  But do you really believe that science is unbiased?  Doesn't it just have a different bias?

According to Wikipedia: "science" ..."is often treated as synonymous with ‘natural and physical science’, and thus restricted to those branches of study that relate to the phenomena of the material universe and their laws..."

Sometimes it feels to me like atheists worship science as if it were a god.  I agree with  David Eagleman, that we need to rule out things that are not possible, (omni-god fits into this catagory) but that we must open our minds to possibilities that have not yet been ruled out.  I also think it may be necessary to expand our vision of the possibilities of reality to something less restrictive than the material universe and it's laws if we ever hope to break the surface like the flying fish.  But we have got to stick to the evidence or we may get lost in another mythical religion.

[openmindedskeptic-blog]

Am I an Atheist?

I really don’t like to think of myself as an atheist.  I’m not sure why.  Perhaps the reasons are similar to the reasons I was always a bit embarrassed to be associated with Christians while I was one.  I feel this way about being a part of any group for that matter.  When you hook up with a group you always give up a part of yourself. 

I simply do not identify with most atheists.  They are often vitriolic, seeming to be on the attack.  I can appreciate why they sometimes behave this way since they are a minority. It is common, perhaps even necessary for minorities to behave in these ways.  Perhaps it is only perceived by the majority that most atheists are this way, when in reality these are just the few getting all the attention.

I also do not agree with many of the extreme positions taken by prominent atheists.  I cannot accept the idea that all of reality as we know it got to this current actuality through the processes of chance and natural selection.  Perhaps some of the remnant Christian ideas are still holding on in my thoughts and emotions.  It just seems too fantastic to have happened without any intention. 

But I have pretty much accepted that I am an atheist by definition.  That is I reject theism, which has to do with belief in a deity.  Ultimately it boils down to your definition of a deity.  I certainly do not believe in Omni-God, or the God of the Bible.  However, that does not preclude the possibility of some conscious life form that has impacted or currently influences our world.  

Primitive cultures are prone see individuals from technologically advanced cultures as Gods.  If we were able to go back in time a few hundred years, taking our technology along with us, we could no doubt convince those people that we are gods.  I imagine the Hundred Years War in the 13th and 14th centuries might have been shortened substantially with the use of the atomic bomb.  It would have been hard to convince witnesses to such an event at that time that this was not the work of God. 

So what is it that makes a God? Immortality? Power or ability? I submit to you that it mostly boils down to claim.  No matter what the level of power a being has, it is not god if it does not claim to be god.  Most of us, if confronted by a primitive culture that thought we were gods, would try to set the record straight unless we wanted to take advantage of the situation for personal gain.  Frankly, I do not trust anyone that makes such claims about themselves or others.  I think that is what makes me an atheist. 

Do I believe that humans are currently the highest form of evolution?  I can’t fathom that any more than I can fathom omni-God.  I have absolutely no idea what that specifically implies.  But in my mind it explains a lot of things that are otherwise unexplainable.

[openmindedskeptic-blog]

Omni-God

“Perhaps you should just quit “thinking” so much and enjoy a simple faith knowing that you do not understand everything but that you do know Him who made us and holds us in His hand.”  (Quote of my friend's mother)

Omni-God is the heart of the Christian point of view.  By omni-God I mean the creator God who is reported to be all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient) and all-present (omnipresent).  Most Christians also consider him to be omni benevolent (loving and good) as well as holy and just, immutable (never changing) and immortal, (meaning he cannot die).

That is one tall order.  It would be pretty freaking amazing if true.  Unfortunately tall orders are pretty easy to knock down.  If you want to win a bet you need to make your claim as small as possible.  It’s going to be really hard to keep everything straight all the way to infinity.

There are some apparent contradictions right off the bat.  These are often discussed in debates between prominent Christian apologists and well-known atheists.  One such argument was first brought to light by Plato in what is now known as Euthyphro’s dilemma. The question is this:  Is a thing good simply because the gods say it is? Or do the gods say a thing is good because of some other quality it has? If so, what is that quality? The problem stumped Euthyphro. It also creates some problems for Christians. 

If morality exists outside of God’s command, it would limit him contradicting his sovereignty and omnipotence.  If morality exists because of God’s command, then morality is whatever he says it is.  Hypothetically, if God told his people to take vengeance on a nation and to kill all of their enemies including the boys and every women who had slept with a man, but keep the virgins for yourselves, those actions would be moral. 

The atheist Bertand Russell asks his own version of this dilemma in his book Why I Am Not a Christian.  Greg Koukl a Christian apologist gives the Christian response in this article on his web site Stand to Reason. His response seems pretty sound, it is one that would have made me proud to be a Christian a few years ago.  He sums it up like this:

“So the Christian answer avoids the dilemma entirely. Morality is not anterior to God--logically prior to Him--as Bertrand Russell suggests, but rooted in His nature. As Scott Rae puts it, "Morality is not grounded ultimately in God's commands, but in His character, which then expresses itself in His commands."[9] In other words, whatever a good God commands will always be good.”

Let’s give Koukl this one and agree that there is no dilemma if “a good God’s commands will always be good.”  He is not limited to goodness by any other force or power greater than himself; he is just good because it is his nature.  The question I want to ask is whether or not this is actually the case according to the Bible, and according to current ideas of morality.  I’ll let the reader be the judge after looking at some Biblical passages.

Numbers chapter 31: The ‘hypothetical’ example above, about keeping the virgins for yourselves was not actually commanded by God; rather, it was commanded by Moses, God’s appointed leader of the Children of Israel during the Exodus (v.17).  God made no objection to this command, and actually received 32 of the virgins as tribute (v.32).  

Genesis 19.  The story of Sodom and Gomorrah. In this story, Abraham’s nephew Lot, apparently the only righteous man in town, is rescued from the destruction of the cities.  This right after he offers up his two virgin daughters to every man in the city to do with them whatever they wanted. The Bible does not tell us whether he was saved because he was righteous or because he was Abraham’s nephew.  By today’s standards it would be considered unrighteous to offer your virgin daughters to sex crazed men for any reason.  Perhaps with God it is all about ‘who you know’?

Genesis 3: The Fall of Man.  Today as a non-Christian I would assert that it really was questionable for God to let Lucifer get to Eve while he wasn't around.  Eve was vulnerable and must have been quite naive having very little life experience.  I mean she really didn't stand a chance against the most powerful being next to God.  What was God thinking?  He had to have known about it, he’s omniscient.  In fact he had to be there, he’s omnipresent.  Why didn't he protect her?  It almost seems like a set-up.

And think of this.  How did it come to pass that Satan was even allowed to exist?  What do we not understand about omni benevolence that allows God to create and sustain the personification of evil?  The Bible says God is the creator and sustainer of all things.  Apparently Satan is part of God’s plan.  I guess everything is part of God’s plan.  I mean he knew everything even before he started therefore he is the first cause of everything that has ever happened.  So it must have been a set up with Eve.  As punishment for her ‘sin’ God increases her pain in childbirth and places her under the rule of man. Does this look like benevolence to you? 

Atheists today often bring up the conflict that arises out of God being all-powerful, all knowing and perfectly benevolent.  They want to know why a benevolent God would not relieve suffering when he clearly knows of it and totally has the power to relieve it.  Why is all creation such a mess?

Good question.  I had my rationalization for that one while I was a Christian, though now it seems weaker than it did to me then.  My answer was that God created man with free will so he could decide whether to choose God or not.  Man therefore is the one to blame for all of the pain and suffering that exists in the world. God did not want mere robots that were programmed to worship him.  He wants humans to do so because they choose to. 

However, upon closer examination, some stories in the Bible seem to contradict my answer. Was God concerned about free will when he hardened Pharaoh’s heart as the Bible says he did in Exodus 7:3?  God explains his reasons in Exodus 10:1-2.

“…so that I may perform these miraculous signs of mine among them that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the Lord.”

All of that suffering caused by the plagues was not the result of any man’s choosing.  God hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that he would not choose what any man certainly would after seeing such calamity upon his people day after day.  What kind of a God would cause such pain in order that his people “may know that I am the Lord”?  Is this a God who only does what is good and right?  If so perhaps we should adjust our opinions of what is right or wrong so that they line up with the methods of the God of the bible?

For me, it is obvious that the Biblical God falls far short of the demands of omni-God.  The God of the Bible is sometimes angry and vengeful while omni-God is loving and just.  The Bible’s version of God constantly changes (his mind as well as his character) while omni-God claims immutability.  Omni-God is omni-present; the God described in the Bible is often missing from a specific and sometimes important location at a particular time.  Omni-God is omniscient, while the God of scripture seems to be surprised by events and outcomes.

After observing these discrepancies I leave it to the reader to decide whether the God of the Bible really does measure up to the claims of being omni-God. I challenge you to read the Bible for yourself with an open-mind.   Omni-God supposedly inspired (some claim he dictated) the writing of the Bible.  He is ‘perfect in every way’ yet this book that is full of discrepancies is claimed to be his revelation of himself.  If you want to hold on to your faith you will need to “quit ‘thinking’ so much”.  But if you want to know truth you must ignore the propaganda of your particular denomination and do some serious thinking  and reading on your own.  Truth never fears honest questions.

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The Truth Shall Set You Free

I have a friend who finds himself in a similar predicament as myself.  Having recently abandoned his Christianity as I have, he has to work out ways to deal with former acquaintances and family members who have remained Christian.

I imagine it may be similar to what it would be like when, having been told your whole life that Santa Claus is real; you finally figure out that this thing you have always believed is not a true picture of reality.  You have no desire to ruin the story for your younger siblings, but at the same time you can’t help but feel a little smug knowing the truth.

In our case, since we are all adults, there is considerably more motivation on our part to enlighten those friends and family members. Moreover there is a strong desire on their part to get us back into the fold and out of the danger of eternal Hell.  This creates a tension that can be palpable whenever we discuss these issues.

My friend is having such discussions with his mother.  The format is email, which helps to keep the emotions in check.  They are also swapping books that each side feels will help the other to understand their position.  It kind of reminds me of the debates you can find on YouTube between some renowned Christian Apologist and a well-known Atheist or Agnostic, only on a much smaller (and for the most part friendlier) scale.  Many times the sincere arguments from one side seem completely irrelevant and sometimes even silly to the other side. 

For Example, my friend recently received advice from his mother telling him,

"Perhaps you should just quit “thinking” so much and enjoy a simple faith knowing that you do not understand everything but that you do know Him who made us and holds us in His hand."

This to me is about as silly an argument as anyone could make, and yet she is totally sincere in making it.  In my opinion it is the crux of the problem with religion.  That is, that faith trumps reason, believing is more valuable than thinking, and tradition overpowers new ways of thinking and living.

When I was still a Christian I remember thinking about the concept of faith.  Jesus reportedly said if you have even just a little faith, that of the size of a mustard seed, you can move a mountain.  I came to the conclusion that there must be some parameters that I was unaware of, because it doesn't work out that way in real life.  Simply believing something no matter how sincerely does not make it true.  Truth must stand on it’s own, in other words, we must use our minds to determine what is believable. 

I suggested to my friend that he ask his mother if she would give the same advice to a Jew or a Muslim, or perhaps a Hindu or Buddhist.  Of course her answer would be a passionate no.  In her mind there is only one way to believe.  Apparently you are expected to diligently seek truth until you find Christianity and then you are to turn your mind off and “enjoy a simple faith”. 

Unfortunately this is a common theme among Christians.  While I was reading Stealing Jesus, I was advised by well-meaning Christians to “be careful what you read, you don’t want to give the Devil a foothold.”  I guess from their perspective they were right. Look where reading that book got me.

I can see where Christians get this perspective. This argument starts with Jesus who essentially said, if you want to know the truth, just listen to me.  He spoke with authority,

“If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  John 8:31,32 niv

claiming to be the voice of God,

“If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here.  I have not come on my own; but he sent me.” John 8:42 niv

and said that if you do not believe, you are sons of the devil,

“Why is my language not clear to you?  Because you are unable to hear what I say.  You belong to your father, the devil,” John 8:43,44 niv

and do not belong to God

“If I am telling the truth, why do you not believe me?  He who belongs to God hears what God says.  The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” John 8:46,47 niv

Are we to believe everything someone says without question because they claim to be speaking for God?  In every instance except Biblical Christianity, my friend’s mother would agree with me that we should not be so gullible.  The naivety of the Branch Davidians or the followers of Jim Jones would astonish her.  But when it comes to her faith, she advises to accept it without thinking too much.

It seems to me that real truth should not fear the eye of scrutiny.

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It's important to know what you believe

  Its funny how when you are growing up you are impacted by the conditions on the ground in the little world you are a part of, never knowing all of the reasons things look the way they do.  I had no knowledge of all of the history that had informed the doctrinal positions I was taught were true.  Many years later I read a book written by a Christian of the liberal persuasion and gained some valuable insights.    

In Stealing Jesus, Bruce Bawer tells the history of the various American Christian denominations as they developed along side American culture.  Of particular interest to me was the story of a man I had never heard of named John Nelson Darby.  Darby was born in London in 1800.  Sometime later he founded a breakaway faction of the Brethren church known as the Plymouth Brethren, and began teaching a doctrine known today as dispensational premillennialism.  Between 1862-1877 he made at least five missionary journeys to North America.

Premillennialism is a big word that largely describes what I was taught to be truth growing up; that Christ will physically return to earth one day to establish his kingdom in Jerusalem, and will reign over the earth for 1000 years. The dispensational part, which Darby was largely responsible for, adds the doctrine that human history is divided into several periods known as dispensations.  Each of these periods marks ‘a different set of divine laws and criteria for salvation’.   According to one version of this teaching, we are currently in the church age, which is the 6th dispensation.  Darby claimed this era would be marked by apostasy and the erosion of Christian morality.

Opposition sometimes acts as a catalyst that lends credibility to an idea.  About the time Darby was initiating his ideas regarding Dispensationalism, biblical scholar David Friederich Strauss published a book called The Life of Jesus Critically Examined.  Strauss was a pioneer in the historical investigation of Jesus.  His work, dubbed Higher Criticism, created a stir in Christian Europe.  These extreme ideas were brought to America after George Elliot translated the book into English in 1846.  Another contemporary of Darby’s, Charles Darwin furthered what many Christians saw as a direct assault on their belief system when he published his theories of natural selection in On the Origin of Species in 1859. 

The combination of evolution and Higher Criticism caused a panic among Christians that lead them to embrace Darby’s new doctrine.  Coincidentally, Darby and Darwin both died in 1882.  However, the ideas each of them fostered had huge effects on Christianity; one represented by fundamentalism, the other represented in modernism.

By the mid-1950’s largely due to the influence of Billy Graham, the terms fundamental and evangelical began to take on different meanings.   The strict fundamentalists focused on a legalistic interpretation of scripture. The evangelicals were more concerned with winning souls than with the fundamentalist’s legalistic and judgmental stance against liberalism.  The battle lines were less distinct to me at the time.

Looking back I can see that the conflict between fundamentalism and evangelicalism was very real in the churches I attended as a child.  In the 19 plus years I lived with my parents we were members of three different churches, each of which suffered from a split where a large portion of its members left in a short period of time.  Sometimes they formed a new church; sometimes the individual families each went their own way, joining whatever group they felt they would best identify with.  There was very little church growth by conversion; most of the new members of any of the churches I attended came from other churches with which these folks had formed some kind of divergence. 

The difference of opinion seemed to reside somewhere between those who wanted to hold onto the old ways that were best represented by the fundamentalists, and those who leaned toward more modern ideas and interpretations.  At the time, I was pulling for newer ideas.  That old time religion seemed too old fashioned for me.  Before I read Stealing Jesus, I had no idea that those ‘old’ doctrines were not as old as I had been lead to believe.

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Bring up a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

I learned at an early age about Jesus, that he loved us so much that he came to earth in order to sacrifice his life on the cross for our sins.  This was the basic message of Christianity that was taught in the small Baptist church that I attended. I’d never heard the words ‘evangelical’ or ‘fundamentalist’. 

As I grew older I was exposed to more detail about Christianity.  I remember being taught that the Catholics had gotten it all wrong hundreds of years ago but thanks to Martin Luther we were once again on the path of truth.  I was told about the ecumenical movement, that it was a faction of Christianity that was intent on watering down the truth in order to accept most everyone. 

I was taught that America was a Christian nation that had been founded on Christian principles, but that we were in danger of losing that designation.  I believed that the Christianity I was taught was basically that “old time religion” that God had preserved down through the ages. We had been given the truth and it was up to us to make sure it didn’t die out. 

Of course that message varied somewhat with every preacher/teacher I encountered.  I also knew there were other people (my relatives included) that were Christians even though they had many different opinions about doctrine.  It seemed imperative that I determine which of them spoke the message that represented the truth. 

Once every few months the pastor would ask the congregation to join him in reading aloud the church covenant.  This was sort of a confession of faith.  It was rather broad stroked in content, covering basic doctrine that all of us agreed on.

When I was nine or ten our pastor decided God was calling him to leave our church.  I found out later that there were folks in our congregation who fully agreed with God’s decision, and had felt that way for some time.  I personally liked the man.  He was gentle and generally kind to all the kids.  He was the man who had baptized me (by single immersion of course).  I trusted him.

After months of seeking God’s will, the search committee decided to present a candidate to the congregation for their approval to call him as our new pastor.  After several more sermons and perhaps a church dinner, it was put to a vote and the majority were in favor.  I personally had my doubts. 

My friend Mike noticed early on how often this preacher repeated the phrase ‘dear friends’.  It was similar to the way a teenage girl might use the word ‘like’, and once you noticed it you couldn't miss it. At first it was funny, then a convenient distraction (we would count the number of times he would say it in a sermon), but soon we were bored and mostly terribly annoyed by it.  I wasn't sure a man who said ‘dear friends’ as often as a nervous speaker might say ‘you know’, was anyone I wanted to be my friend.

Parents really should ask their kids about things like whether or not to ask a particular preacher to be the new pastor of their church.  Kids have a sense about these things.  It turned out that quite a few adults began to agree with the kids after a little time had passed.  Eventually some of them started to 'feel lead' to begin their own search for a new church home.  That got others thinking along the same line and before you knew it, the little church was beginning to struggle financially. 

Some thought it would be more efficient to ask the pastor to leave, but he was having none of that.  He had a too recent memory of living on ‘love offerings’ from the irregular speaking engagements he’d had while looking for God’s will regarding which church to lead. And besides, how could he quit just as God was beginning to work?  Sure some people had left, but that is to be expected when you are truly doing the Lord’s work.  God was just separating the wheat from the chaff, right?

Eventually some new people started coming, people who thought this pastor was wonderful.  That sealed the fate of that little church for decades to come.  My parents finally heard God calling them to have a look around.  By this time I was fourteen.  My older brothers and I got involved in a youth group at a sister church and my parents decided that God wanted them to attend there too.

And so once again we were part of a fine community of believers.  Until God decided that our pastor could serve him better if he moved several states away to a little church in Iowa.  This time around the scene played out pretty much the same as in our previous church except for the names and the dates.

After the new pastor had settled in he began to lead the church toward a serious commitment to God.  This meant that we had to set ourselves apart from the world. A major point of dissension occurred when he implemented a rule that no male who had hair over his ears would be allowed on the platform (I Corinthians 11:14). This happened a few weeks before a scheduled Easter concert was to be performed by the youth choir, forcing many of the young men in the choir to choose between serving God and getting their hair cut.

By the time I graduated from High School things were really coming to a head.  This time the folks who opposed the new pastor all got together and made a concerted effort to hold on to the churches assets.  But they failed to get enough people to sign a petition.  Most of the dissenters were willing to go so far as to look for a new church home but a number of them could not bring themselves to actually oppose the authority God had put over them.  My parents were in that camp, but about that time decided that God approved of a decision to move forty miles north to enter into a new business opportunity.

The church split right in two with a large group of the dissenters sticking together to form a new church which met in a local school, then a local business’ conference auditorium, and finally in a vacated church building belonging to another denomination.  I was too busy getting to know the girl I was about to marry to be very concerned about any of it.

We were married about the same time my parents moved.  My wife and I visited a few churches for a while, but then just quit going altogether.  I found it hard to decide what I believed. I couldn't fully agree with any of them.

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The search for truth is more precious than its possession.

Albert Einstein

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Old Time Religion??

Christian doctrine is very multifaceted and extensive.  Although it is pretty easy to pick up the basics, you never really achieve complete understanding of it; there is always room to grow.  You have to accept by faith the portions that you do not understand.  So in practice, your specific beliefs are molded as you grow in your understanding of the whole.  This is why it is so important to attend services, read good Christian authors and study the Bible.

Therefore every Christian has a different view of the whole, having experienced the particular aspects of it that he has been exposed to and in the particular order they were made known to him or her. Christianity when taken seriously is very dynamic.

Secular folks often see Christianity as more static. They view Christians in a manner similar to the way Rush Limbaugh sees Liberals, as a united homogeneous group of people who all have the same views and opinions.  This is convenient for Rush, because it allows him to demonstrate the fallacy of being Liberal anytime and every time  any one of them shares a personal opinion on any subject that opposes Conservative values. 

If you make a particularly convincing argument against one aspect of their belief system, Christians are likely to tell you that they do not hold to that belief or to the part of that belief that your argument applies.  There is a good chance that they don’t, or they may adjust their specific belief on the fly.  This is not a trick in the sense that they are only trying to win an argument.  They are simply working out their faith as they grow in it.  You might talk them out of some of their ‘faith’, but you are not likely to talk them out of all of it. 

My journey away from God actually began as the result of my efforts to move toward the truth in this manner.  My then current understanding of God caused me to believe this meant going back to an earlier time when truth was in a purer form.  My focus was on the early church.  

But I stumbled on a book that really knocked me for a loop.  The book was Stealing Jesus by Bruce Bawer.  This book revealed a history of Evangelical Fundamentalism that I had never heard before.  For the first time I basically heard the other side of the story that I had learned in Church and Sunday School.  And this version was well documented.  It gave me great pause and set me off in a slightly altered direction.