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.
Finding Truth 
SOM,
Fine. But in fairness, this means you should have no objection to the Mormon belief that a Jewish tribe settled in America thousands of years ago. Agreed?
Also, while we’ve all been poking fun at each other a bit, I want to make sure that you don’t view we non-believers as some kind of caricature. Most of us were once very dedicated Christians who began to experience growing doubts about several things. It’s not that we wanted to stop believing — in fact, most of us studied rigorously to validate Christianity, and it was only through those attempts that our faith was jeopardized.
So don’t think that we’re being flippant about the subject matter. We wouldn’t know so much about these issues if we didn’t care about them.
I, for one, enjoyed being a Christian, and I centered my entire life around it. But just as a child will eventually reach a point where he no longer can believe in Santa Claus, I eventually learned enough about Christianity that I could no longer believe it. Maybe I’m wrong in my assessment — maybe Christianity is the one true religion. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that any of us came to our unbelief accidentally, maliciously, or irresponsibly. It’s the result of deep study and deep thinking.
Hopefully, you approach your beliefs with deep study and deep thinking as well. If so, then maybe we can all eventually get past the insult-throwing and get to an actual discussion centered around mutual respect. So far, I don’t really feel like we’ve been able to achieve one.
Do you have any thoughts about that? Do you see where I’m coming from?
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RE: “Looked at in that light, it would have been absolutely essential for Pharaoh to wipe any mention of Moses from the historical record.”
But why would your god allow that to happen? Or is he not able to control the actions of a Pharaoh?
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Nate,
Mormon, like Protestantism, is a break from orthodox Christianity.
That means it is a break with a religion whose very foundation is tradition.
By that I mean that the teachings of both Moses and Jesus were scrupulously passed down through the ages from one generation to the next.
Consequently, you are trying to compare apples and oranges.
There is no comparison between one man, Joseph Smith, founding a religion out of whole cloth and Judaism which has 1000’s of years of rich tradition.
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RE: “The so-called “old stories” are integral to the Hebrew culture and Jewish faith.” – so you’re asking us to show respect for a culture based on fables and plagiarism? Why?
Rome was founded by two brothers, Romulus and Remus, who were orphaned at birth and suckled by a she-wolf – do you believe that? You must, it’s an old story, and Rome was a far greater influence on Western culture than Judaism or Christianity ever was – in fact, if it were not for Rome, the Judeo/Christian religion would still be just one of a thousand Middle Eastern cults, squabbling over whose god could piss the furtherest..
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But Si, what is the evidence for that belief?
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RE: “You people claimed that Jesus and Moses didn’t exist because a consensus of archeologists says so.”
And you’re saying that the collective words of educated experts carry less weight than a group of bronze-age priests who thought the earth was flat and the sun orbited it. Hmmm.
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@Si – tradition is nothing more than people doing something because everybody else is doing it.
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Mormonism is directly comparable.
You’re saying that people are completely reasonable to accept the existence of Moses (let’s not even bother with Jesus right now), even though there’s no historical evidence, because it comes from an old tradition. But the age of the tradition is irrelevant. Gilgamesh is a much older character than Moses, and he was widely believed in. Should we accept him as well? Furthermore, Christianity becomes problematic by your rationale, because it diverges from Judaism, which is a far older tradition.
The thing is, the complaints you have about Mormonism are the same complaints we have about Moses — there’s no archaeological evidence, and there should be. The desert keeps artifacts very well, and for that many people to wander the desert for as long as they did, there should be evidence of it. Plus, the Egyptian evidence doesn’t match. I know you say it was stricken from their record, but when you combine it with the fact that no evidence of the Exodus exists, it’s pretty damning. And then, when you put all of that with the archaeological evidence that shows the accounts of the conquest in Joshua could not have happened, there’s no reason to continue to believe in a literal Exodus story.
I know that’s hard to accept, and I wouldn’t expect that one issue to make you question Christianity. But it’s unreasonable for you to keep arguing that treating Moses as historical is completely reasonable when so many lines of evidence are against it. Instead, let’s move on to some other claims of Christianity and see if we can find a pattern. If the rest of the Bible is confirmed, and we’re only left with the Exodus as being questionable, then I can see why that one issue wouldn’t rock someone’s faith. But if we find that many other stories, prophecies, etc, are problematic, then a clear picture starts to emerge.
So what do you say? Ready to move onto a topic other than Moses? Because archaeology’s verdict is not going to change in the foreseeable future… We might as well move on and test another part of the Bible.
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Nate,
I’d like to refer again to the first churches reference in the bible to the death of annanias and saphirus, as well as apostle Paul.
The apostle Paul is more the head of the Christian church than Jesus in a sense that people tend to preach his teachings more than that of Jesus.
What’s the difference between Joseph smith and apostle Paul?
Also, can you be a Christian of you don’t follow the order of salvation according to the bible?
Peter responded to the question of salvation by commanding them to “repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus for the remission of sin, and o receive the infilling of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues.”
Also he stated that “the promise is given to all them who are afar off even as many as The Lord god shall call”
Is it fair to say those who do not follow this, cannot truthfully call themselves Christians?
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Archaeo,
Tradition is how original meaning, knowledge, wisdom and memory are passed down through the centuries, generation to generation.
It keeps mankind from having to learn the same lessons over and over again, from having to continually reinvent the wheel.
Atheism is the supreme doctrine of ingrained ignorance and stupidity precisely because it rejects tradition, thus also rejecting ancient knowledge, wisdom, memory and original meaning.
Since memory is fundamental to both personal and human identity, atheism means not only the loss of age old wisdom and knowledge but the loss of human identity.
That is why the greatest mass murders in human history have been committed by atheist regimes.
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Nate,
I explained why comparing Mormon and orthodox Judeo-Christianity doesn’t work. You’re just going to have to give my explanation sufficient consideration.
You are committing the gross error of generalizing all religions and attributing to them the same qualities.
Again, that is very provincial and indicates shallow thinking.
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Archaeo,
Again you are attributing to me something that is totally untrue.
It is the nature of Judeo-Christianity, its history, and its tremendous impact on the entire planet that weigh against your claims.
And supposedly educated people advocate absolutely stupid and untrue notions all the time, everywhere.
I’m not giving you my personal opinion. My arguments are also from scholars.
I have examined both sides and your side requires such a narrow, provincial understanding of religion and history that it simply isn’t reasonable.
What you folks are doing is narrowing your world down into something so tiny that atheism fits within it.
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Nate, RE: “Christianity becomes problematic by your rationale, because it diverges from Judaism, which is a far older tradition.”
That’s an excellent point!
RE: “…it’s unreasonable for you to keep arguing that treating Moses as historical is completely reasonable when so many lines of evidence are against it.”
And when you pull up the Documentary Hypothesis and learn of all of the groups who actually wrote the portions of the Bible attributed to Moses, it really pulls the sheet over him.
So what do you want to look at next? Abraham riding camels in 2300 BCE that wouldn’t be domesticated for another 1300 years. How about the flood, stolen from Mesopotamia? Or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, sitting on a geological faultline that runs all the way to the Olduvai George in Africa?
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Si, RE: “Atheism is the supreme doctrine of ingrained ignorance and stupidity precisely because it rejects tradition, thus also rejecting ancient knowledge, wisdom, memory and original meaning.”
Not at all, we sort through traditions, ancient knowledge, wisdom, memory and original memory, and if we see any evidence of value there, we keep that which is of value and throw out the rest. The Chinese had a legend that a pig was trapped in a burning house – once the fire was out, the people discovered that the cooked pig tasted better than raw, so it became tradition to lock a pig in a house and burn it. Later, they sorted through that tradition, through out the BS, and used common sense about the rest.
RE: “That is why the greatest mass murders in human history have been committed by atheist regimes.”
Could you find a more prolific mass murderer than Adolf Hitler?
“Who says I am not under the special protection of God?”
— Adolph Hitler —
“Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith … We need believing people.”
— Adolf Hitler —
April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordat of 1933.
I’m curious, Si – when was the last time you recall ever having been right about anything? Ever?
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Si, I can only assume you’re on one of those learn-a-new-word-a-day programs, I’ve noticed you’ve used “provincial” 7 or 8 times just this afternoon alone. It’s good to keep up with your education, you never know when it will come in handy.
“I’m not giving you my personal opinion. My arguments are also from scholars.” – which scholars? Name them, I named my sources, you name yours.
RE: “It is the nature of Judeo-Christianity, its history, and its tremendous impact on the entire planet that weigh against your claims.”
If by “impact,” you mean that The Church gained the power, by threat of excommunication, to force kings to abide by its decisions, which included death sentences, from 600 to 1600 CE for anyone owning a Bible not written in Latin, and who could forget the ever-popular Inquisition? Yeah, Judeo-Christianity certainly has had a tremendous impact on the entire planet, it blacked out all learning in the Western world for nearly a thousand years – fortunately we are beginning to recover from it. In another 200 years, old Yahweh will join Zeus, Odin, Mithra, Ra, and all of the others.
“Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds?”
— H. L. Menken —
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Oh, and Si, RE: Mass murderers – I neglected to mention that roughly 3% of the US prison population are atheists, all the rest believe in god – I guess a man really IS known by the company he keeps.
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Arch. You’re awesome. As in my mouth is almost open in awe.
I have a mental picture of IgnorantMindset bent over with you behind him spanking him with his bible.
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Well, thank you, Mark!
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Archaeo,
What I’m conveying comes from 3 graduate schools; one Catholic, one Protestant, one secular.
And just a smidge of basic reasoning that I learned from reading Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas.
The power to reason is what atheists give up when they become atheists.
That’s why I suspect that what you think you learned from your “sources” is just your personal opinion.
You say you have sources just to lend authenticity to what is clearly stupid.
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Archaeo,
That’s BS. You don’t sort through anything.
You can’t think. You can’t reason.
That only leaves you thinking what you’ve been told to think by other stupid people.
The notion that Moses and Jesus didn’t exist is moronic.
If you’re a moron you believe Moses and Jesus didn’t exist. It’s as simple as that.
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“‘Scrutumini scripturas’
(‘Let us examine the scriptures’)
These two words have undone the world.”
— John Selden —
(1584-1658)
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I asked for the names of your “scholarly” sources, and in return, I get: “What I’m conveying comes from 3 graduate schools; one Catholic, one Protestant, one secular.”
Yet once again, I have no evidence of your claim.
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My, Si – how “provincial” —
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Archeao,
Since all you’ve got left is being gratuitously abusive, it’s clear that I’ve offered sufficient and effective rebuttal to your nonsense.
The abuse is standard atheist fare after they’ve humiliated themselves in a discussion.
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Rebuttal? Kindergartners know more about debating than you do – you offer only nebulous responses so you can’t be pinned down as professing anything in particular, and thus can never be proven wrong. When asked a question, you obfuscate. And you have the audacity to claim the high ground? Pathetic.
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