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. Peter, that is quite interesting about Campbell and Lucas. I wasn’t aware of that. I’m a Star Wars fan myself. Saw the original when it debut in ’77. I also read The Power of Myth over a decade ago during my deconversion period. Two of my favorite quotes by Campbell are”

    “Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.”

    “I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”

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  3. Archaeopteryx and Crown – The Band

    Let’s call our first album “The Demented and the Damned”

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  4. “There’s a final resurrection and judgment – Jesus said that.” – No, an anonymous author who never met Jesus SAID that Jesus said that, and that goes for any other quotations attributed to Jesus, if he ever existed.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. If you’re going to call it “The Demented and the Damned,” shouldn’t that be “Crown and Archaeopteryx,” rather than “Archaeopteryx and Crown“?

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  7. Jesus existed. Shroud, Lanciano, Incorrupt, Lourdes, Dove to the face, and he hugged me too.

    Oh yeah, he exists.

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  8. “The Demented and the Damned” could apply to each member of the band separately.

    After all, the road ahead is long and full of potholes, and maybe worse.

    You could convert. I could go crazy. Hell, Judas was an APOSTLE for God’s sake.

    Perry Mason could end up Denny Crane.

    The spirit is willing, for now, but the flesh can be quite weak. I have found that the ability to resist passions is more due to their weakness than my strength. So, who can say?

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  10. Here’s a laugh for my ‘Truth’ buddies (especially you, Crown. . . wink!) A gem from FB –

    I need to have as much wild sex as possible, so that one day I can become an inappropriate old lady who blurts out things like, “When I was your age I got a concussion after being bent over a desk!” and my family can be like, “Nannie, please – you’re making Easter dinner really uncomfortable!”. It’ll be great. 🙂

    Enjoy your Saturday!

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  15. Oh, Carmen – out of the BLUE! You’ve got me rolling on the floor here, and I don’t do that often! Last time I did that, I dozed off while I was down there and woke up sober!

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  16. Howie, I can see your suggestion and it is kind, and I appreciate that. I think you have the best intention. Please let me say one more thing that hopefully will put you more at ease, even though we disagree.

    I agree with you that the Canaanite children were not guilty of their parent’s sin. This is also a biblical principle. So, what sin do I think the Canaanite children were guilty of? I don’t know for sure and don’t want to speculate much.

    I really want to stress that holding the annihilationist position on the Conquest of Canaan is not dangerous. The Israelites had good reason to trust Moses as a prophet because he had performed miracles and YHWH demonstrated his power in Egypt and they witnessed this firsthand. Today, Jews and Christians would have an extremely high bar for anyone claiming to be a prophet or who would claim that a modern nation ought to become an instrument of divine judgment. In the bible God usually uses nations without giving them a prophet and command (i.e., Greece against Tyre, Babylon against Israel, Romans against Jerusalem in 70 AD). And, it rarely involves annihilation, only twice in the bible.

    But, compare this to Islamic jihad which truly is a dangerous idea. Jihad is a STANDING ORDER to kill and oppress the infidel into submission to the Sharia law. Even Muslims who do not carry out some literal form of jihad, through terrorist attacks or monetary support thereof, frequent support jihad in polls. Just Google polls of Muslim support for terrorist groups, suicide bombing, etc from Western countries; this is shocking!

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  17. Brandon:

    The good news is that most of the great slaughters in the Bible never happened. There was no world wide flood that drowned millions of innocent children. There was no Sodom and Gomorrah with thousands of innocent children burned alive. There was no mass slaughter of the first born of the Egyptians. There was no Conquest of Canaan and mass slaughter by invading Israelites.

    Archaeology and geology have confirmed that a great world wide flood never happened.

    Archaeology has never found one shred of evidence (contrary to the preposterous pseudoscientific claims of Christian fundamentalists) for the existence of the Patriarchs, mass Hebrew slavery in Egypt, the forty years in the Sinai, the Conquest of Canaan, nor the great empires of the Biblical David and Solomon.

    None.

    Thank God…(whoever she is)…that the Judeo/Christian baby-slaughtering god is a fable. A fable made up by ancient nomads. None of these events ever happened.

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  20. Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

    And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.

    —Jesus of Nazareth, Lord God of Heaven and Earth

    So…you’ve died…and during your life you didn’t believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior. You either heard about him and chose not to believe that a first century Jewish prophet was the Creator of the Universe, or, you had never heard of him…and…didn’t “seek” him hard enough…so you too died without believing in him.

    Now you are burning in Hell.

    And how long are you going to burn in Hell? Let’s take a look at some numbers:

    100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years

    Are you done?

    Have you burned and suffered enough to satisfy the “just” righteousness of the (Christian) God for your thought crime of unbelief in him and for your ancestors’ forbidden fruit eating? Is the God who “so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” satisfied with your punishment?

    No.

    He wants to watch you scream and writhe in horrific agony for another…

    100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years

    …and then he’s still not satisfied.

    He wants to watch you burn some more…

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  21. Gary, the Scripture doesn’t say that. Your tradition says that, but Jesus doesn’t say that.

    There are two opportunities to suffer after death:

    (1) In Gehenna, after death, “until the last penny is paid” (and not longer). And you avoid that by being forgiving of the sins of others.

    (2) In the Lake of Fire, after final judgment, for certain crimes against God – which can be repented and forgiven and paid – but if not, then into the fire, for the Second Death. Which may very well be death. Gone.

    Your tradition turns “until” into “forever” every time the word appears in both Testaments, but that’s a reading comprehension problem, not the reality.

    And it’s not about belief. It’s about deeds. The tricky part is that it’s hard to do the right deeds if you don’t believe.

    Example: killing will get you damned to the final fire. You DEFINE killing as being less than killing, but killing is as defined by God, not men.

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  22. @Crown

    Have you already forgotten the genesis of Gehenna (equivalent Hebrew word ge-hinnon)? It is NOT a place of punishment for the naughty (as you have indicated above and in previous comments); it is referring (literally) to the valley of Hinnom (also called the Valley of the Slaughter).

    While it’s true that God enacted punishment on those who committed the horrible sacrilege of burning their own sons for a sacrifice to the pagan god Moloch in the valley of Hinnom, it is not and never has been a place of penance for future generations. Jesus’ references to it were meant strictly for the Jews because they knew the history of what had happened there.

    To Christians/Catholics, the word has acquired the meaning of “hell,” which is widely accepted as the place and state of eternal punishment for the (so-called) fallen angels and humans who die deliberately estranged from the love of God.

    (BTW, the interpretation of gehenna being a place of eternal fire is also incorrect.)

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  24. Nan, I have not forgotten what you said. I simply reject it as untrue. Jesus used to word, which doesn’t appear in Scripture before him, and he gave context for the word. He was the Son of God, divine, so he knew what he was talking about. And therefore everybody who says anything that departs from a word of what he said is by definition ignorant of reality and wrong. And I ignore their opinions and stick with what Jesus said. Be he was God, and they’re not.

    The most important part of what Jesus said regarding after-death punishment, the prison of spirits, was in the parable of the unforgiving servant, in which, at the end, the unforgiving servant was cast into prison to be tormented UNTIL the last penny was paid.

    Jesus said the same thing would happen to sinners, unless they were forgiving. He said, elsewhere, that sinners would be forgiven TO THE EXTENT THAT, they forgave. That’s in the Lord’s Prayer also.

    The operant word in what Jesus said is UNTIL.

    That is also the operant word in the Hebrew that is always mistranslated as “forever”. God doesn’t promise things to the Hebrews forever. He promises it “ollam va’ed” – until a distant or unknown time.

    UNTIL means that there is a finite end, at some point. It may be unknown, but it is finite.

    And Jesus said UNTIL – UNTIL the debt is paid.

    That’s Purgatory.

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  25. Last I checked most Catholics believe that you burn in Purgatory. And everyone except the Virgin Mary and some of the Saints, will go to Purgatory.

    So everyone is either going to Hell or going to Purgatory in your belief system. You may not believe that the burning will last all eternity, but most Catholics do believe that people will burn, and if you have ever burned yourself, five seconds is unbearable, let alone years, which is what my Catholic relatives all expect to spend in Purgatory.

    I find your view of Hell better than that of conservative/fundamentalist Protestants, Crown, but it is still a barbaric concept and all over our ancient ancestors eating somebody’s fruit.

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