Agnosticism, Atheism, Christianity, Faith, God, Religion, Truth

Never Going Back

Nate

I value open-mindedness over most other things. When I was going through my deconversion and having frequent religious discussions with my family, I often felt that they weren’t being open-minded. I know that it’s hard (perhaps impossible) to judge how open-minded someone else is being, so I hesitate to even pass that kind of judgment. At the same time, it’s not like they were answering the problems I brought up with actual solutions — it mostly centered on how arrogant I was to question “God’s word.” On top of that, they never read any of the books or articles that I asked them to — I don’t think they even read all of the stuff I personally wrote to them.

It was the seeming lack of open-mindedness that shocked me most, in many ways. During my time as a Christian, I tried to be as open-minded as possible. I was part of a strict denomination that thought most other Christians were wrong, so I often had discussions with my Christian friends to try to help them see “the truth.” In those discussions, I often admitted that I could be wrong:

Either I’m wrong, or you’re wrong, or we’re both wrong. We can’t both be right…

I firmly believed (based on Matthew 7) that as long as I was searching for the truth, I would find it. Also, if what I believed about Christianity was true, then more study would only bear that out. In other words, I had nothing to fear by discussing and examining Christianity with those who disagreed with me. If they could show me where I was wrong, then that was good! It would mean that I had believed the wrong thing, but learning that would give me the opportunity to correct it and be more pleasing to God.

Now that I have come out of Christianity, I still feel just as strongly about the merits of open-mindedness. Recently, someone suggested that I read In His Image, by William Jennings Bryan (which I’m now doing), but when he gave me the suggestion, he then backpedaled and said I might not like the book because it supports Christianity. I was disappointed by that statement. I told him that I don’t read things based on whether or not I will agree with them — I take religion very seriously, because all religion is an effort to explain reality. If this book by WJB can provide some arguments I haven’t considered before, or answer some of my questions about Christianity, then I want to know that!

But now for the admission. Now for the part that I haven’t been able to say to my family yet: I don’t see any way that I’ll ever believe Christianity again. On the surface, that may seem like it runs counter toward my goal of being open-minded, but it really doesn’t. The fact is, I’ve just seen too much. “I once was blind, but now I see.” The fact is, the Bible can’t fix its problems because it’s a closed document. No more material is going in or out of it. Nor is God going to speak to me directly or perform some miracle to overcome my skepticism. We’re stuck with what we’ve got.

We’re left with a god that’s supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, and loves us all, yet we still have evil in the world. He remains hidden from us, but supposedly wants a relationship with us. He supposedly left us a message, but no one can agree on what it says, and its books look pretty much like all the other things that were being written at the time. As this post said:

Let’s face it – I may still be open to the idea of being convinced on the matter, but this is a genie that’s not going to go back into the bottle easily. I can’t unlearn what I’ve found; I can’t simply deny the truth that I’ve been able to discover without the fear of uprooting my faith. To ask me to believe again would be to take on the herculean task of not only providing sufficient evidence but also dealing with all of the logical and evidential problems or to ask me to knowingly deceive myself – and I’m not sure I’m willing to do that for anyone.

I am still an open-minded person. But I also know enough about Christianity now to know what it is and what it isn’t. I didn’t lose my faith by forgetting things, but by learning things. And if I had known years ago what I know now, I never would have been a Christian in the first place.

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Published by Nate

445 thoughts on “Never Going Back”

  2. Nate, I don’t think any of “us” would mind at all if you closed the comments on this subject. There are always lots of other things to discuss when it comes to the fallacy of religion. And I’m sure you have topics rummaging around in your head that could easily result in a new posting. 😉

    Arch, I agree with your statement made earlier: “I don’t know why any of you continues to bother with him. He’s never going to give anyone a straight answer to anything.” The only reason I got into the fray was because he said something that was really off-base (about Paul and Peter) and I simply had to have my “say.” But then, that’s his pattern so I should have known better. sigh.

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  3. Nan – For quite some time, on Think Atheist, we had a theist who was quite an intelligent and well-educated man, and though he, too dodged questions on occasion, when he knew he had no defense, such as why pedophiles in the Catholic Church are shuffled around, rather than punished, but all in all, he gave us some thought-provoking debates. Si, on the other hand, is here only for the attention, with no intention of intelligently discussing anything, and if all of us had simply agreed to ignore his comments, he would soon have tired of being his own and only audience member, and would have gone away. IMO.

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  4. Shucks, I was really hoping to get him to 500 (so near, yet so far) – it wouldn’t exactly hurt my feelings, if some of you guys sent a little traffic my way!

    Before this closes forever, let me ask all of you to please go to – http://www.avaaz.org /en/malalahopenew/ – and sign this petition for little 15-year old Malalla Yousefez, who was shot in the face by Taliban last year, it may help other Pakistani girls like her, to be given a fear-free education.

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  9. SOM

    1. “That you would ask such a silly question means that you are not in any realm reachable by reason.
    You simply have no capacity for deep thinking, inductive thinking or thinking that allows the mind to reason its way from point A to point B.
    You satisfy your doubts with explanations that feed your doubts. That is another indication of your slavery to personal bias.”

    I asked if you were Christian or deist. I also asked which god you meant was self-evident, Allah or some other?
    I asked those questions because of your earlier refusal to answer any question inquiring about your faith and theology. I also asked those questions after you wrote this:
    “Since the existence of God is self-evident (known through reason) and has been known for about 2500 years, atheism is automatically disproven.

    Since God exists and his existence is proven, atheism must therefore be a delusion since adamant belief in what is false is delusional.”
    If you are relying on reason to believe in god, that is similar to deism. If you’re relying on the Koran, then muslim, if the bible then Christian, etc. Perhaps you can explain why my requests for clarification were silly. Is it because the bible isn’t clear and that’s and since that’s your brand you have trouble with clarity?

    2. “It is the Jews and Christians who get to assign meaning to their scriptures, not you or the phony sources you quote from.”

    LOL. What phony sources have I quoted from aside from the bible? I once was a devout Christian until I became aware of the problems and count keep pretending there were satisfactory answers. Saying that we have the view the bible the way other people tell us to may make things easier, but it also makes us like the young prophet in the book of kings… Gullible and likely wrong.

    3. “What would people think if you went to JK Rowling and told her that you knew more about her Harry Potter books than she does and that she’s been wrong about Harry Potter all along.”

    Not an apples to apples comparison. JK Rowling is writing a fiction and she can hold interviews to discuss her own book. God isn’t going to found taking questions on the bible. If a couple of guys wrote a book and said that Rowling dictated it to them, and that book held certain contradictions, it’s fair to ask whether they were honest ion their claims if they say that Rowling isn’t taking any questions on it, nor will she even say herself whether she had any involvement.

    Now, if the bible is fiction, then no problem. If god wants to step up and confirm the bible is his, then okay. But otherwise, I am doubtful of the human author’s wild claims -0 especially when I see a multitude of inconsistencies within their composition.

    4. “If you want to learn the authentic meaning of the Bible you must study from those sources. Saint’s Augustine and Aquinas are required reading in most graduate schools.”

    When I was a Christian, this sort of thing always annoyed me. If the bible was god’s word, then why would anyone need a man made book to help them understand god’s word? Was god not an adequate author, that he needed fallible man to clarify certain things for him? It really does more to show how far short the bible falls from being perfect or clear.

    5. “Since I just used simple logic to prove that atheism is a faith-based belief, you are the one who has trouble with logic.”

    Just saying something is something else doesn’t serve as “proof” and I think you may be confused on what “logic” means.

    6. “I’ve answered enough of your questions. It’s useless because you aren’t really after answers.

    You just move the goal post and blithely go on as if the answer to your previous question didn’t even happen.” (to Nate)

    The answer to his previous question didn’t answer the entirety of his question, necessitating further clarification. If you find it hard to clarify without sounding like a fool, then that says something about your position, not the question.

    Whether it be in regard to the catholic church or protestant churches or the bible itself, taking what they say for themselves is and pointing out inconsistencies they hold is a problem for those interties – not the one who inquires about them. If you have answers for them, please provide them. Saying, “you’re too dumb to understand” doesn’t seem to be helpful, and “it is because it is” isn’t a good reply either.

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  10. Just had to leave global-warming-naysayer, Silenceofmind, a little food for thought to take with him in his lunchbox.

    Something to think about:

    The Earth is 4.6 billion years old. Let’s scale that to 46 years. Using that analogy, we have been here for 4 hours. Our industrial revolution began 1 minute ago. In that time, we have destroyed more than 50% of the world’s forests.

    This isn’t sustainable.

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  13. I thought I would leave this for you, Silence, in case you should everr decide to further your education:

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  14. There was supposed to be a video there, but for some reason, it didn’t load – let me try it another way:

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  15. So suddenly it loads, and now we have two of them – that’s OK, Si – now you can learn twice as much!

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  16. I ran across an article, Where Are the People?, that some might find interesting:

    “Just 10 years ago, evangelical Christianity appeared to be America’s dominant religious movement. Evangelicals, more theologically diverse and open to the secular world than their fundamentalist brethren, with whom they’re often confused, were on the march toward political power and cultural prominence. They had the largest churches, the most money, influential government lobbyists, and in the person of President George W. Bush, leadership of the free world itself. Indeed, even today most people continue to regard the United States as the great spiritual exception among developed nations: a country where advances in science and technology coexist with stubborn, and stubbornly conservative, religiosity. But the reality, largely unnoticed outside church circles, is that evangelicalism is not only in gradual decline but today stands poised at the edge of a demographic and cultural cliff. The most recent Pew Research Center survey of the nation’s religious attitudes, taken in 2012, found that just 19 percent of Americans identified themselves as white evangelical Protestants—five years earlier, 21 percent of Americans did so. Slightly more (19.6 percent) self-identified as unaffiliated with any religion at all, the first time that group has surpassed evangelicals.”

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  19. The fact is, the Bible can’t fix its problems because it’s a closed document. No more material is going in or out of it. Nor is God going to speak to me directly or perform some miracle to overcome my skepticism. We’re stuck with what we’ve got.

    I realise now I been hoping that somehow God would speak to me directly or perform some miracle to overcome my skepticism. No wonder I have been stuck in limbo for so long unable to bring resolution to my position.

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  20. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I kept thinking the same thing for a while… surely some piece of evidence would suddenly present itself to solve all these problems! Realizing that wasn’t going to happen was a pretty big deal for me. And I’m glad the realization finally came, because it made things much simpler.

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