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. Wow, thanks for sharing Gary! Do you view all the movement you had among various denominations as a sign that you were always honestly searching for truth? Were there always things that just didn’t seem quite right to you?

    I ask, because I’ve often wondered about what makes some people see the problems while others are content to look right past them. As you said, it sometimes makes you wonder if it’s worth wasting time trying to show people the flaws in Christianity when they so often ignore or excuse them. Yet those same problems made a big difference to people like us. Is it because we were always searching anyway? That we were always open to the possibility that we were wrong? That little things kept nagging at us from time to time? Or is it something else?

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  2. Hi Gary. 🙂

    I think it was *sgl* who pointed you to DagoodS blog. If not him maybe Ruth?

    I watched the whole thing go down (so-to-speak) (starting at Bruce’s blog).

    I’ve never met anyone who won a debate with DagoodS. :mrgreen:

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  4. this is a fiction, but I’d like to recommend “This Perfect Day” by Ira Levin.

    I read it as I was coming out of religion, and if you read it with that in mind, you’ll be able to understand the recommendation.

    Gary and nate’s comments made me think of it.

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  7. “I’ve never met anyone who won a debate with DagoodS.”

    The man does know how to turn a phrase. And look under every rock at every possible angle.

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  8. Zoe wrote: . . . 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.”

    I could relate to everything you wrote, Zoe. Adam Lee, a writer for Pathos and Big Think wrote:

    “It is tragic, but understandable, why so many men throughout history have supported these sexist and patriarchal belief systems. More incredible is how many women have willingly taken part in their own subjugation by joining and participating in religions that have done their utmost to deny them the full equality and equal rights which they deserve.

    The reality is that sincere religious beliefs and legitimate interpretations of scripture can, and very often do, cause immense evil and harm. And when a more enlightened future age arrives to tote up the harms done by religion, I am certain that the systematic oppression and denial of basic rights to one-half of the human race will rank near the top.”

    I’d say that it will not rank near the top, but at the top, primarily because it has generally been women who were the primary caregivers of children and that cruel guild placed upon women does have a direct effect on her offspring. Childbirth and motherhood was cursed by a so called loving god.

    There are scars. What Christianity did to my psyche as a woman was nothing short of psychological abuse. I put my full trust in the god of Christianity, and when I became devout, I did not realize, as I “grew” in the faith, that I’d be going from the frying pan into the fire. I’m so glad I’m free from that hell.

    ————-

    Gary wrote: “So this is what I now say to them: Your religion and your god condone Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide. I want nothing to do with any organization or entity that perpetrates, endorses, or justifies the wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children.”

    I can’t tell you how much joy I feel when I read your comments, Gary. This is exactly how I see it, and the main reason why I left Christianity. People can discuss scripture and whether prophesies came true or not, but the crux is that Yahweh, Jesus daddy, should be the last “person” anyone would want to give their loyalties and love to, considering.

    I remember not long ago when you started posting on Ruth’s blog and how full of fear you were at the time. In fact, your experience inspired me to write a post about fear, and in that post, I quoted what you wrote to me on both Ruth’s post and Ken’s (KC). I got a lot of email from people thanking me for posting the information on how to overcome fear using neuroscience techniques that the Navy has started using on their Seals recruits; so I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for having the courage to share so personally and honestly about what you were experiencing at the time. So many of us could relate as we had similar experiences. 🙂

    To my American blogging buddies — Happy Thanksgiving! I am thankful to be free from the grip of authoritarian religion. I am thankful to feel fully alive and comfortable in my own skin and mind — having cast aside the inhumane teachings of original sin and hell. (Go Nan)

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  9. I was raised in a church that taught against original sin. They thought that all men eventually sinned, which is why the needed jesus, they thought that babies had no sin, and probably began accumulating sins in adolescence, but they never held firmly to an exact time when sin entered a person.

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  10. I was raised Catholic then after my husband died, I got involved in (proselytize to) evangelical Christianity. Every mainstream denomination I was involved in taught original sin, but some taught that children were not held accountable until a certain age.

    Augustine of Hippo believed that the serpent approached Eve because she was less rational and lacked self-control, while Adam’s choice to eat was viewed as an act of kindness so that Eve would not be left alone.

    What denomination were you involved in, William.

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  13. no, no, not them. this was more of an adjective than a name. This group is around the US and Canada, but they are small and use the bible as their creed, so it can be hard to nail them down on things.

    They used to say, “just because it says, ‘church of god’ on the building doesn’t mean they’re really a church of God.” then we’d all grin in righteously superior amusement, because we were THE right church, you know.

    of course, we all assumed other small churches that saw things like us, but that may use a differing adjective were also part of that ONE.

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  16. I know. of course i see it now and shake my head in wonder at how I could have ever bought into it. It is almost crazy. I would say that it is crazy, except that so many do it, and when i did it, I didnt feel crazy – just misled, under educated, under informed and gullible.

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  17. “Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the TRUE religion – several of them.”
    — Mark Twain —

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  18. “I would say that it is crazy, except that so many do it, and when i did it, I didnt feel crazy – just misled, under educated, under informed and gullible.”

    Well put.

    …now and shake my head in wonder at how I could have ever bought into it.

    Same. For me, it was a slow thaw, but then there I gained an awareness that really was a wake-up call — it shook me to the core about how powerful indoctrination can be.

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  19. I questioned my brand religion before I questioned the bible or god. Once I began to question the bible, I was surprised at how quickly it tumbled.

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  20. “I questioned my brand religion before I questioned the bible or god.”

    Same, here, William. In fact I questioned every denomination I was involved in during my pursuit for “truth”. But the last denomination I was the most active in really encouraged its followers to study the OT. The shock was enough to reactivate neural circuity associated with critical social assessment and judgement. Never saw it coming.

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  24. it was nice, and you know, despite the sarcasm and sacrilege, it’s good to remember to thank the the actual people whom you may think are just the unwitting pawns of the imaginary deity you thank in your prayers; they may actually benefit from such thanks.

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