Agnosticism, Atheism, Bible Study, Christianity, Culture, Faith, God, Religion

Frustration

Nate

Sigh…

So here’s what’s been going on lately. Most of you who read this blog already know that when my wife and I left Christianity, it wrecked most of our family relationships. My wife’s parents and siblings, as well as my own, felt that they could no longer interact with us socially after our deconversion. We were no longer invited to any family functions, and our communication with them all but disappeared. We would speak if it was about religious issues, or if there were logistic issues that needed to be worked out in letting them see our kids, etc.

Over the years, things have gotten a little better, especially with my wife’s parents. Things are by no means back to normal, but at least our infrequent interactions have become more civil and more comfortable. A few weeks ago, I even had a phone conversation with my father that lasted about half an hour and had no references to religion whatsoever. It was nice.

Nevertheless, the awkwardness is still there, just under the surface. And we’re still blacklisted from all the family functions.

Throughout this time, I’ve occasionally reached out to my side of the family with phone calls, letters, facebook messages, etc, in an effort to discuss the issues that divide us. I don’t get much response. I’ve always been puzzled by that, since I know they think I’m completely wrong. If their position is right, why aren’t they willing to discuss it?

In the last five years, I’ve also been sent books and articles and even been asked to speak to certain individuals, and I’ve complied with every request. Why not? How could more information hurt? But when I’ve suggested certain books to them, or written letters, they aren’t read. When I finally realized that my problems with Christianity weren’t going to be resolved, I wrote a 57-page paper to my family and close friends, explaining why I could no longer call myself a Christian. As far as I know, none of them ever read the whole thing. And sure, 57 pages is quite a commitment. But they say this is the most important subject in their lives…

This past week, the topic has started to come back around. A local church kicked off a new series on Monday entitled “Can We Believe the Bible?” It’s being led by an evangelist/professor/apologist that was kind enough to take time to correspond with me for several weeks in the summer of 2010. I’ve never met him in person, but a mutual friend connected us, since he was someone who was knowledgeable about the kinds of questions I was asking. Obviously, we didn’t wind up on the same page.

can we trust the bible?

My wife’s parents invited us to attend the series, but it happens to be at a time that I’m coaching my oldest daughter’s soccer team. So unless we get rained out at some point, there’s no way we can attend. However, we did tell them that if practice is ever cancelled, we’ll go. I also contacted the church and asked if the sermons (if that’s the right word?) will be recorded, and they said that they should be.

Monday night, the weather was fine, so we weren’t able to attend. And so far, the recording isn’t available on their website. However, they do have a recording of Sunday night’s service available, which is entitled “Question & Answer Night.” I just finished listening to it, and that’s where the bulk of my frustration comes from.

It’s essentially a prep for the series that kicked off Monday night. They’re discussing why such a study is important, as well as the kinds of things they plan to cover. What’s so frustrating to me is that I don’t understand the mindset of evangelists like this. I mean, they’ve studied enough to know what the major objections to fundamentalist Christianity are, yet they continue on as if there’s no problem. And when they do talk about atheists and skeptics, they misrepresent our position. I can’t tell if they honestly believe the version they’re peddling, or if they’re purposefully creating straw men.

A couple of times, they mentioned that one of the main reasons people reject the Bible comes down to a preconception that miracles are impossible. “And if you start from that position, then you’ll naturally reject the Bible.” But that’s a load of crap. Most atheists were once theists, so their starting position was one that believed in miracles.

They also mentioned that so many of these secular articles and documentaries “only show one side.” I thought my head was going to explode.

And they referred to the common complaints against the Bible as “the same tired old arguments that have been answered long ago.” It’s just so infuriating. If the congregants had any knowledge of the details of these “tired old arguments,” I doubt they’d unanimously find the “answers” satisfactory. But the danger with a series like this is that it almost works like a vaccination. The members of the congregation are sitting in a safe environment, listening to trusted “experts,” and they’re injected with a watered down strain of an argument. And it’s that watered down version that’s eradicated by the preacher’s message. So whenever the individual encounters the real thing, they think it’s already been dealt with, and the main point of the argument is completely lost on them.

For example, most Christians would be bothered to find out that the texts of the Bible are not as reliable as were always led to believe. Even a beloved story like the woman caught in adultery, where Jesus writes on the ground, we’ve discovered that it was not originally part of the gospel of John. It’s a later addition from some unknown author. To a Christian who’s never heard that before, it’s unthinkable! But if they’ve gone through classes where they’ve been told that skeptics exaggerate the textual issues in the Bible, and that the few changes or uncertainties deal with only very minor things, and that none of the changes affect any doctrinal points about the gospel, then it’s suddenly easier for them to swallow “minor” issues like the insertion of an entire story into the gospel narrative.

Sigh…

I’m going to either attend these sessions, or I’ll watch/listen to them once they’re available online. I may need to keep some blood pressure medication handy, though.

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Published by Nate

1,060 thoughts on “Frustration”

  1. Crown-
    I think you did an excellent job of presenting an incredible amount of information – so much that I actually thought my head literally exploded at one point. I do think you’re right about miracles and proving them, though. I tend to be in the camp that believes that Jesus could have been ministering within the past 5 years, and we could have an abundance of video, document, artifact, and oral information attesting to the fact that he performed all miracles recorded in the gospels, and there would still be rejection because of all the reasons we see here: people could have mistaken what they saw; video evidence can be tampered with; reports don’t line up with one another, or even contradict each other at some points; “I didn’t see it, and I won’t believe it unless I witness it personally”; etc, etc, etc. Heck! Even Pharaoh’s lackeys could duplicate almost all of the “miracles” God performed. Jesus and God have left us primarily to ourselves and our own conclusions. I am not a historian, scientist, etc, but it seems to me there just isn’t enough evidence to convince someone on those grounds that God exists and Jesus is God. That gets Jesus and God in a lot of hot water. But, for whatever reasons, that is the way they chose to relate to us. The Gospels reveal a God who became incarnate to an unknown woman in a backwater town, is recorded to have directly instructed people to not reveal who he was, couldn’t even perform miracles in some towns, didn’t even know when he himself would return, couldn’t convince his own followers beyond a period of a minute or two without some additional miracle, and then died a regular old criminal death. He chose not to make himself and his message definitive beyond a doubt, for whatever reason. It is superstitious to believe. It is almost foolish to have faith. Yet, some of us continue to have that faith in the face of staunch opposition. I think it’s good to communicate what we believe and why we believe it, whatever those reasons are for each person. But, expect heated resistance. It’s just not ever going to be definitive for everyone. None of us like that, but it’s the way it is. Good luck to you!

    Liked by 1 person

  2. 7. The shroud has no known history prior to the mid-fourteenth century, when it turned up in the possession of a soldier of fortune who cannot or will not say how he acquired the most holy relic in all of Christendom.

    8. The shroud surfaced in France exactly at the height of the ‘holy relic’ craze, the collection of patently false relics relating to Jesus. Not one such relic has ever been proved to be genuine, and the faking of relics was rife at this time. There were between 26 and 40 “authentic” burial shrouds scattered throughout the abbeys of Europe, of which the Shroud of Turin is just one.

    9. The earliest written record of the shroud is a Catholic bishop’s report to Pope Clement VII, dated 1389, stating that it originated as part of a faith-healing scheme, with “pretended miracles” being staged to defraud credulous pilgrims. The bishop’s report also stated that a predecessor had “discovered the fraud and how the said cloth had been cunningly painted, the truth being attested by the artist who had painted it”.

    10. In 1390, Pope Clement VII declared that it was not the true shroud but could be used as a representation of it, provided the faithful be told that it was not genuine.

    No pope has ever declared the Shroud authentic. None. So Pope Clement VII, the pope at the time that the shroud surfaced said it was NOT authentic, and no pope since has declared it authentic. That should tell you something.

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  3. Not my blog, Josh, but I’m sure that one of the many reasons you are so welcome here is your open-mindedness – and the fact that you resemble the Pillsbury Dough Boy, nobody doesn’t like him! Oh wait, that’s Sara Lee – nevermind.

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  4. “The Gospels reveal a God who became incarnate to an unknown woman in a backwater town, is recorded to have directly instructed people to not reveal who he was, couldn’t even perform miracles in some towns, didn’t even know when he himself would return, couldn’t convince his own followers beyond a period of a minute or two without some additional miracle, and then died a regular old criminal death. He chose not to make himself and his message definitive beyond a doubt, for whatever reason.”

    If you knew that tonight your neighbor’s house is going to explode in a ball of fire and that your neighbor, his wife, and his little children are all going to be burned alive…would you leave them vague hints and tips about what was going to happen to them? Or would you pound on their door, stand out front of their house and yell at the top of your lungs to warn them?

    So we are to believe that the Almighty God of the universe loves the whole world so much that he sent his only son to pay the death penalty for our ancestors’ forbidden fruit eating, but, he sent him to some small backwater area of the known world; hiding his true identity for his entire life; and after dying, only appearing to people who had already believed due to his sporadic miracles. And if we don’t believe we are going to be burned alive for all eternity!

    Nonsense.

    If there is an almighty, loving God he would make sure that every one of us knows about his eternal torture pit; he would go out of his way to tells us. He would appear to each one of us; he has the power to do it. He would flash a message on the moon: “REPENT AND BELIEVE IN MY SON, JESUS OF NAZARETH OR BURN IN ETERNAL HELL FIRE.”

    So either the Christian story is a lot of baloney…or the Christian god is a sick bastard who enjoys watching billions of humans writhe and scream in agony in his eternal torture chamber.

    It’s one or the other, Christians. Don’t tell us your god is a “loving Father” and then tell us that he burns people alive for the thought crime of not believing in him and submitting to him as their master.

    Liked by 4 people

  5. Thank you, Gary, for that last comment.

    Although I can appreciate that Crown went to a great deal of trouble to share his information, I still see miracles – bottom line – as what he IMAGINES to be true. I am a teacher and think it’s wonderful that people have imaginations – we have a plethora of works of literature that illustrate the beauty of imagination, for example. But that’s ultimately what religion boils down to, for me – a mythical work of various men’s imaginations.

    I, for one, did not read anything that led me to believe that anyone was being nasty, as asserted by Crown – in disagreement perhaps, but not nasty. Maybe it’s that ‘persecuted christian’ complex?

    Liked by 2 people

  6. Imaginations of men, indeed.

    “A penis panic is a mass hysteria event or panic in which male members of a population suddenly experience the belief that their genitals are getting smaller or disappearing entirely. Penis panics have occurred around the world, most notably in Africa and Asia. Local beliefs in many instances assert that such physical changes are often fatal. In cases where the fear of the penis being retracted is secondary to other conditions, psychological diagnosis and treatments are under development.

    It is becoming increasingly clear that these forms of mass hysteria are more common than previously thought. Injuries have occurred when stricken men have resorted to apparatus such as needles, hooks, fishing line, and shoe strings, to prevent the disappearance of their penises. An epidemic struck Singapore in 1967, resulting in thousands of reported cases. Government and medical officials alleviated the outbreak only by a massive campaign to reassure men of the anatomical impossibility of retraction together with a media blackout on the spread of the condition.

    http://listverse.com/2009/03/16/top-10-bizarre-cases-of-mass-hysteria/

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  7. Dear Christians,

    We could get into a long debate over the lack of evidence for the many supernatural and historical claims in the Bible such as:

    1. A six day Creation.
    2. The age of the universe.
    3. A world wide flood.
    4. The origin of languages from a tower.
    5. The patriarchs
    6. Hebrew slavery in Egypt.
    7. The Exodus.
    8. The Conquest of Canaan.
    9. The great empires of David and Solomon.
    10. The forgery of the Book of Daniel.
    11. The absence of any contemporaneous non-Christian accounts of great earthquakes in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus death, the three hours of darkness, zombies roaming the streets, the resurrection, and the post resurrection appearances to hundreds of people of the executed King of the Jews.

    We could debate all these issues, and why there is no evidence to support these claims, but the claims of the Bible can be shown to be ridiculous nonsense by just one claim of the Bible, and it is this:

    What is the cause for the massive suffering of billions of human beings on earth today and for the previous thousands of years?

    Answer: ancestral forbidden fruit eating.

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  10. Gary, to your ‘ancestral forbidden fruit eating’ I would add, ‘which, in millions of people’s minds, got blamed on WOMEN’. . even more damaging.

    Liked by 1 person

  12. Neuron and Carmen:

    It really is a sick, chauvinistic belief system. Let’s hope that more and more Christians will have the courage to remove the rose colored glasses from their eyes and see their ancient belief system for what it is: a tall tale.

    Liked by 1 person

  13. It’s one or the other, Christians. Don’t tell us your god is a “loving Father” and then tell us that he burns people alive for the thought crime of not believing in him and submitting to him as their master.

    Hey Gary-
    There are many, many Christians, myself included, who would tell you that God does not “burn people alive in hell for the thought crime of not believing in him and submitting to him as their master”.

    I recommend reading:

    Robert Farrar Capon
    C. Baxter Kruger
    Sharon Baker
    Rob Bell (especially Love Wins)

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  15. We’ve lost the forest for the trees.

    The interesting thing about the Shroud isn’t that Jesus is on it.

    It’s that the image itself is a true miracle: nature can’t make it, and man can’t make it either, not in the First Century, not in the 14th, and not in the 21st.

    It’s proof of POOF.

    There are many other such objects, each with their examinable miracle.

    These things prove miracle.

    And THAT is what is interesting.

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  16. Crown … you originally said the shroud looked like Jesus. Then you fudged in your response when I asked how anyone could know it was Jesus. And now you’re saying it isn’t Jesus on the shroud!

    From everything I’ve read, the whole reason the shroud is venerated is because people believe it’s Jesus.

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  17. Josh,

    For the majority of the last two thousand years, Christians have terrorized “sinners” with the threat of being burned alive for all eternity in God’s torture pit as described by Jesus himself in Christianity’s ancient middle eastern holy book. In the modern era, as secular/humanistic morality has gained prominence in our culture, the harsh, very judgmental, traditional Judeo/Christian morality has been repeatedly reinterpreted and softened to make the Christian message more palatable to modern, non-superstitious, educated people:

    1. You don’t really burn, but you are in pain…forever. Torture.
    2. You aren’t in physical pain, only psychological pain. Torture.
    3. There is no pain in Hell, but you will miss out on all the fun in heaven. Silly.
    4. Hell is just separation from my imaginary ghost god in the sky. I can live with that concept.

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  18. It’s kind of funny: when you do a Google search on ‘how shroud of turin was painted’ the links keep alternating between those who say it’s obviously a painting and those who say it obviously isn’t. So much for experts, huh?

    However, I did run across this article that talks about an Italian chemistry professor who tried to make a similar shroud using materials from the time of the shroud’s origin (whether this means 1st century or 13th, I don’t know). According to the article, he was pretty successful. I haven’t researched it past that one article yet, but I thought I’d share. It definitely makes me more skeptical of the claim that science can’t explain its existence.

    http://www.livescience.com/9740-shroud-turin-evidence-closer.html

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  19. Gary-
    The fact the doctrine of hell is continuously reinterpreted is undeniable. And, I’m not certain that’s a bad thing, or something for which Christians should be embarrassed. I think it’s good to go back and look at what we think we understand on a regular basis and evaluate whether it makes sense, both to us and in the context of what was originally taught/written. I have read a few articles that do a nice job evaluating what Jesus and the NT actually taught about hell. Here’s a good one by unkleE:

    https://theway21stcentury.wordpress.com/what-to-believe/hell-what-does-the-bible-say/

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  21. Thanks for the additional links, Nate. I don’t put any stock one way or another in the shroud, but I’m always fascinated to read and watch about this old stuff 🙂

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  22. It’s a pity the article about the Italian chemist didn’t give us details about the image he made. Was it formed of Maillard Reactions? Was it a three dimensional negative? Was it on both surfaces of the cloth?

    It looked very much like the image, the article says. That’s nice. But did it look like the image under a microscope? Did it look like the image chemically? Can you make a 3D hologram from the image? Does it have the 3-D quality? When you photograph the image, do you get a photographic positive?

    The article gives no technical details, nothing. That’s why the article isn’t admissible into evidence in a Court.

    Perhaps the scientists tests would be admissible, and he’s around to testify to it.

    The cloth itself would be – it’s not an historical artifact in a treasury. His image, which “looks like’ the Shroud, can be examined. That way we can test his image precisely, point by point. “Looking very much like” is not reproducing the image. People have been making Shroud images for years – things that LOOK LIKE the Shroud image. They’ve done it by heating statutes and putting a sheet over it. They’ve done it by rubbings.

    These produce images that LOOK LIKE the Shroud image. But, when you analyze them forensically, they’re nothing like the Shroud image.

    If you find anywhere that gives details on the chemistry of his image, please post them.

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  23. Nan,

    I didn’t fudge anything.

    The image on the Shroud looks like what we’d expect Jesus to look like from art. Of course, the iconography of Jesus’ face in particular COMES FROM the image on the Shroud.

    The image on the Shroud contains all of the cross reference points that a Christian would expect – it looks like the crucified Jesus.

    That’s not fudging.

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  24. Hi Josh,

    I have also read the Christian explanations of why Jesus didn’t literally mean that people would be cast into a lake of fire where there is gnashing of teeth and the worm dieth not, and maybe the explanations are true. Maybe Jesus was speaking figuratively. It’s possible.

    But here is the problem: If the Holy Spirit reveals truth to Christians as the Bible claims, why is it that it is Science that keeps forcing Christianity to redefine the “true” meaning of what is said in their holy book? Why didn’t the Holy Spirit reveal the true reality of hell, the non-literal six day Creation, the non-world wide flood, the non-just-a-couple-thousand-year-old earth, and on and on…

    Isn’t it much more likely that the reason Christians must repeatedly update what an all-knowing, perfect God really meant to say…is that their all-knowing, perfect god never said it…and… probably doesn’t exist?

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  25. @Crown,

    … all of the cross reference points that a Christian would expect …

    I guess that pretty well sums it up. IOW, if you believe the bible story, then you believe what you see in the shroud. The power of suggestion is strong indeed.

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