Agnosticism, Atheism, Christianity, Creationism, Culture, Evolution, Faith, God, Intelligent Design, Religion, Truth

8 Year Anniversary!

Nate

So today marks 8 years that I’ve been doing this blog. That’s a pretty big milestone! I had two posts on November 14, 2006, and I thought it would be fun to repost them here (along with a little commentary).

Here’s the first:

Well, this is the first official post of my new blog. Don’t expect much, though. I’m hoping to turn this into a weekly thing with posts centering around religion – specifically, “Christianity.”

Wish me luck… 🙂

So that was innocuous enough. Now here’s post number 2:

If you’ve spent much time perusing your Bible, you’ve probably stumbled across passages dealing with the “mystery” (and most likely, these were passages written by Paul).  In Ephesians 3, Paul spends time revealing the mystery to us: that the Gentiles now have access to salvation!  Wrapped up in this mystery is God’s entire plan of salvation – salvation for all!  But why is it called a “mystery?”  And should it still be “mysterious” to us today?

I think 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 best explains the way in which Christ’s gospel was/is a mystery.  As vs 18 says:

18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

We can see from this passage that God’s plan of salvation makes no sense to those who refuse to believe it, but to those of us who accept it, it’s brilliant!  Verse 21 goes on to say:

21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

See, because the world is so “wise,” it views the concept of God as foolishness.  They have been blinded by their own pretensions.  For the Jews and Greeks of the day, it wasn’t that they didn’t believe in the supernatural; it wasn’t that they didn’t believe in deities.  Their problem was that they thought they already knew what God would do.  The Jews already had a fixed idea of what the Messiah would be, so when Christ appeared and didn’t lead them to victory against the Romans, they refused to accept him.  The Greeks didn’t accept Christ because they couldn’t conceive of a god allowing himself to be put to death by his own creation.  And because they already had things “figured out,” they missed their chance.

Today, people do the same thing.  They would rather put faith in scientific theories that have not been proven.  They would rather believe that all of the order we see in our universe (the fragile food chain, vast differences throughout the animal and plant kingdoms, the very specific orbits of planets, etc) was created through a giant explosion (something that, in all practical applications, has only been shown to destroy, not create).  Have they been blinded by their own “wisdom?”

Too often, even those who profess to be religious only listen to their own ideas about what God wants.  Many times they view the Bible as a collection of stories or suggestions, and not the “wisdom of God that leads to salvation” that 1 Corinthians purports it to be.  How is that different from what the Jews and Greeks were condemned for?

Throughout the Bible, passages talk about truth and understanding.  I firmly believe that God gave us understanding and intellect for a reason.  We are supposed to be able to understand God’s message for us.  It’s not supposed to be “mysterious” any longer.  It’s not supposed to be some “better felt than told” experience.  No, God’s word is supposed to be powerful and undeniable.  It’s supposed to move us and touch us in a way that nothing else can.  But for it to do that, we have to read it, study it, know it.

It’s a little painful to read through that. I cringe when I read how badly I understood things about evolution and the Big Bang back then, or when I alluded to non-Christians as just being those who “refuse to believe it”. It’s kind of funny, but I was guilty of the same thing I was accusing others of. I thought I had the answers, but I had never taken time to really examine any other point of view.

The one decent thing from the post that serves as a bit of foreshadowing about where I would eventually wind up is the last paragraph. You can see that while I was firmly ensnared in Christianity, I believed that it was not supposed to be utterly mysterious. It was supposed to be consistent and “undeniable.” It took a while, but I finally realized that Christianity just didn’t deliver in that regard.

Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed this little jaunt down memory lane. Someone suggested to me recently that I should think about doing this kind of review with more of my old posts. I’ve been considering it… Thoughts?

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Published by Nate

342 thoughts on “8 Year Anniversary!”

  1. In relation to the original topic of this thread, I am mortified by something I wrote in 1996. I wrote a huge paper on how I had developed religious faith. At the time, I had actually come to believe that there was a God, and I was frightened into accepting Jesus as that God. I was by no means evangelical about it, but I can’t even believe I got that far into it. Some seriously weird things happened, for which I still do not have an explanation. Luckily, my sister said, “Stop hanging out with those people (the particular group of born-again Christians I was associating with). They’re scary!” She was right, and I did stop associating with them. The faith that I had developed faded away when it wasn’t fed.

    I have become aware that being an atheist, and not being sorry for it, is something about which I am passionate. I have spent a lot of time associating with other atheists, writing about it, learning about Christian apologetics and the counter-responses, etc. I wish this was not so. I wish I didn’t care. I apparently feel the need to not be fooled again. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody.

    Talk about objectivity! My sister was the one with the objectivity back then. She saw what was going on – I was vulnerable, and ripe for the harvesting. No wonder I am so passionate about atheism. I am so grateful to be able to say things like this somewhere, to be validated. Thanks!

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  2. Hey Nate, I think I have a decent image of you in my minds eye, composed of the blogs comments you’ve made over time, and can’t help but wonder, almost as how I wonder what “Hell On Wheels” is going to end its season finale. I wonder where “Nate” is going to take us in the next season premiere of his life.

    Further I am curious about other life concepts and ideas your mind has to offer, besides religion. As hard as it is for all conversations not to eventually lead to the ultimate question, it would be thrilling I think, to discuss other tangents with you, and am curious if you could make a topic for general discussion, maybe science discussions or just a have a convo about how now that we don’t believe in “God”, or “Dog” or as The Wisp calls it, the god God. What do we think reality is? That can go in many directions I think. Good tangents.

    Any how, thanks for the years of this blog, it’s helped my journey many times. Keeps me from self guilting. Keeps me thinking theres is maybe importance on bettering myself for something more awesome my mind can perceive. In many ways I think the irony of this blog is that in finding atheism, Im finding more God.

    Maybe they coexist together in perfect disharmony and balance.

    Life is cool.

    What the fuck is it?

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  3. what the fuck is it? lol.
    oh Mark, ,you are cute, cute, cute!

    @gliese <em"I wish I didn’t care."

    I wish I didn’t, either. buuuuutttt, I can’t seem to help myself,
    I watch way too many christian themed t.v programs.
    and fox and friends,
    why? I dunno.

    I think I need to keep up with what the enemy is up to.
    I think most of them are just crazy and/or misguided,
    but there are a lot that are just downright evil people using the name of jeezzzuuuuussss for personal gain.

    and not a week goes by that I’m not threatened with bodily harm by a xtain just because they don’t like they way I spell “jeeezzzuuuusssss”

    i wish i didn’t have to care, but it’s a matter of survival.

    i think i was awfully lucky and a bit smart to have never fallen for it in the first place, even though they tried enhanced interrogation tactics to beat it in to me.

    thanks for the compliments

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  7. I bet them there “Godly men” in Promise Keepers would love that “dickoration”.

    “We are called to worship God as phallic kinds of guys, not as some sort of androgynous, neutered nonmales, or the feminized males so popular in many feminist-enlightened churches” (p. 51).

    “To be male is to be a phallic kind of guy, and as men we should never apologize for it, or allow it to be denigrated by women (or crass men either)” (p. 24).”

    ~Robert Hicks — The Masculine Journey

    50,000 copies of the book were given to all the attendees (men) at the 1993 Promise Keepers Rally.

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  8. “Sound like something that’s right up your alley.” – Did you by any chance Nan, MEAN that as a double entendre?

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  12. I’ve been away for a few days, so sorry for the late response — that was hilarious, Nan!

    Mark — thanks for the comment! I appreciate the kind words, and I really like your idea for a blog post. I have one more in the works that I want to post first, but then I’ll take your advice. Thanks!

    Btw, I’m a fan of “Hell on Wheels” too, though I think I liked the first 3 seasons the best.

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  14. King James Bible,
    Matthew 5:44
    “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;” – jeeezzzuuussss!!!

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