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. I understand, william, and to a point, I agree. But after awhile, it just gets old because she continues to harp on the same things over and over again without ever truly addressing the questions that have been presented to her.

    Actually, I suppose she’s not doing anything different than most believers who respond to non-believers … they revert to the scriptures or the sovereignty of their god instead of offering valid points WHY they believe as they do.

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  2. yeah, it only makes me more certain, as it only makes it more apparent that they are grasping and frantically trying to have something to hold on to.

    One must suspend reason and logic in order to maintain the bible is from god, at least as I see it.

    is there a god? I dont know. But I do know the bible is just a shoddy literary work by man.

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  3. Kathy, i was reading back though all of your comments saw among your first posts something about Jephthah and how one could see that he really didnt sacrifice his daughter if you studied deep enough.

    can you elaborate, please?

    as i read judges 11:30 – 39 seem to say that he did in fact sacrifice his daughter to the lord. Or are you saying that god never told him to sacrifice his daughter?

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  4. Paul,

    I wasn’t trying to skip on rainbows, or fly on sheets of sunshine or whatever

    It was refreshing to see how neither Kathy or Nate resorted to calling each other crude names, that’s what I mean by decent.

    If I get “slapped” for sharing my thoughts then at least I’m glad it’s online 🙂

    https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=j79vVOD7Aoi3mwWDp4CoAw&url=http://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DQjd8HobrTzA&ved=0CC0QtwIwBg&usg=AFQjCNECiOTz4LeFeXPjq602ECVf6918mw

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  6. Paul, it’s like so many things here — nothing is exactly as it seems. Did I actually make a mistake to use ‘Cathy’ or was there method to the madness.

    You should know that I’m smarter than the average bear.

    Hope you’ll stand back and watch the fun.

    And, oh, by the way, when the ship hits the sand, you have to cover your act or else you won’t be worth spit.

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  7. OMG! Mikey, did you know the SHIP actually does hit the sand in the book by Hugh Howey? Appropriately enough, the title is “Sand.”

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  9. Hey Zoe! (waves to other heathen Nannie. . . ) You know, I think heathen Grandad would do just about anything to shock us – wasn’t there a shot of him parading around in his underwear somewhere on the blogosphere? (cackle, cackle!)

    Hope everyone’s Saturday is lovely! (since I’m up before the rest of ya! – well, except Zoe)

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  10. This week, it’s my word – a couple of months ago, it was my hose – is that all you ladies ever think about? Oh, the shame of it all!

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  11. Oh, arch, don’t go gettin’ your hose in a twist! I can guarantee that his word is longer than my word. It wouldn’t take much, just a tiny one will do, since I have no words…

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  17. Speaking of anniversaries, today marks the 51st anniversary of John Kennedy’s assassination. I ask Christians to imagine that the very first account of that event had not been written until 40+ years afterward. Upon what would it be based? Today, we have the technology to Google those still alive, who witnessed that tragedy, and cell phones to call and interview them, but 2000 years ago, that technology didn’t exist.

    Where did the information come from, regarding the life and death of Yeshua? Was it fact-based, or a product of fertile imaginations, one copying another? And if fact-based, who provided the facts, and how were they obtained?

    Would some Christian please answer those questions?

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  18. Arch, you obviously have no faith in Yeshua. Do you have faith in anything? Someone asked me that once, and I had to say that I didn’t have any. I know some Christians claim atheists have faith in science, but that’s just nonsensical. Science proves itself, therefore faith is not necessary. I don’t think my issue is with a god existing, as much as it is with faith itself.

    What about anybody else? Can you say you have faith in anything?

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  20. “Do you have faith in anything?”

    Yes – in the unconditional acceptance that a child gives to someone they love.

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  21. Gliese, the definition of faith is all over the map when it comes to believers, so I think it’s hard to have too much of a useful conversation about it. In some sense I think if you keep asking the question “why do I believe that” continually like children do, you come down to some basic beliefs that have no justification, unless you are cool with some sort of circularity which I think most people don’t like.

    In that way, maybe belief in those basic foundational beliefs is like faith. But for me it’s a little different because I think it’s possible to try and build a view from some very basic beliefs which practically all people share and which we all believe would make us go insane if we didn’t believe them. Also, I don’t see any need in saying “I know for sure by faith that the belief is true”. It’s more of a practical thing for me, and I admit I could even be wrong on some of those basic beliefs. But some theists describe their own faith that way too.

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  22. What I find amazing is that I almost actually had faith in God at one point. Out of desperation, I let myself believe what I knew wasn’t so. It was a powerful force for change in my life, too. Over time, since I didn’t feed it, it died. I can’t imagine ever going back.

    I know a guy who needs his faith in Jesus. Before becoming a stark-raving Christian, he was a bad, bad man. He hurt people, did drugs, sold drugs, and was generally an inconsiderate slut. (He would laugh and say, “Hell yeah, I was.” if I told him I said that about him. In fact, he’s said that about himself to me.) Now his felonies have been expunged, he’s married, and works as a physical therapy assistant. He is very active in his evangelical sect. I think his faith is good for him. He tells me he hopes I find Jesus. i tell him that I’m fine – he’s the one who needs Jesus.

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  24. gliese2475
    November 22, 2014 at 10:13 pm

    […] I know a guy who needs his faith in Jesus. Before becoming a stark-raving Christian, he was a bad, bad man. He hurt people, did drugs, sold drugs, and was generally an inconsiderate slut. (He would laugh and say, “Hell yeah, I was.” […]

    I was this guy. Okay, not this guy but I was that human being who also needed my faith in Jesus. Or so it seems to me from my current vantage point. Broken, shattered foundation, scared to death of death, (short story). Though never a literal slut, as I went through the various developmental stages of my faith I learned very quickly that essentially I was a slut. My heart was deceitful, wicked, my ancestry was rife with sin and there was nothing I could do about it, damn Eve my ancestor, weak woman that she was. Eve failed me. Eve was a failure. It’s because of her I had birth pain, it’s because of her I was “less-than Adam” and could never be a preacher, no way . . . I was humanly weak, spiritually weak and certainly a temptress who not only was sinfully weak but could also spread it around to all the Adams within my reach.

    What I never knew until I knew (and of course that’s Satan’s fault and my fault because again I was spiritually weak, up to my pre-frontal cortex in my cesspool of pride, a liberal and a democrat with absolutely no objectivity afforded to me by my ancestors and their original sin,) that I could in fact stop being a bad, bad man, hurt people, do and sell drugs and be such a slut all without Jesus.

    Well that felt confessional and good.

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  25. “I was humanly weak, spiritually weak and certainly a temptress who not only was sinfully weak but could also spread it around to all the Adams within my reach.”

    Are you sure we’ve never met?

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