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. By the way, all but one of the researchers who joined the “mummy project”—all working with dead bodies and body parts, embalming popes and saints—died of tumors and cancers, thought by doctors to be related to the chemicals they had worked with. The project has been stopped by the Vatican because no one wants to do it (fearing cancer).

    Moral of the story: Jesus will perform a miracle to preserve a pope or saints’ pretty face…but he will give cancer to the people helping him complete the “miracle”.

    Bad Jesus!

    Liked by 1 person

  3. One of my biggest issues, Gary, has always been that if Yeshua is able to beam in and out of locked rooms, why did the stone need to be rolled away. If it hadn’t been AND the tomb had been found empty, THEN we might have had grounds for a genuine miracle.

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  5. That’s it, Nan. Thanks! “Perfectly Pickled Pope”

    Arch: Yes, but see. If Jesus had made his resurrection too obvious as a miracle, then it wouldn’t require any faith, and Jesus wants you to have faith to believe in him….I don’t know why that is so important to him but it really, really is.

    But, if I knew that you, Arch, were going to fry in my eternal fire pit, and I didn’t actually want you to fry in my eternal fire pit, I would do all kinds of miracles to make sure you knew, for sure, that I am the Ruler of Heaven and Earth, with your pathetic destiny in the palm of my hand, so that you would believe in me as your Lord and Master…I mean…Lord and SAVIOR…I wouldn’t depend on you figuring it out…by faith.

    But, for whatever reason, Jesus did just enough miracles to get our attention…and then expects us to make the final jump to eternal life (eternal fire-pit-avoidance)…by faith.

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  6. See, Arch, the Judeo-Christian god enjoys playing games with his little creation creatures—his little mini-hims.

    When he made the universe, he could have made humans like he did all the other animals on the planet…without an eternal soul. But, no, he wanted man to have a soul and to have a free will to love him or reject him. The all-powerful, eternal, perfect, I-don’t-need-anything King of Heaven and Earth needed someone to love him…by choice. He couldn’t bare to create robots to praise and worship him. He wanted love, praise, and worship from creatures who had freely chosen to love, praise, and worship him.

    So to test his little mini-hims, he put a “temptation tree” in the middle of his perfect garden. Not in the corner. Nope. He put it right where the little mini-hims (and hers) would have to walk by it everyday and be tempted. When they didn’t fall for it, he put a walking/talking snake in the tree to trick the mini-hims to disobey him, and therefore, choose not to love him, which must have been what he wanted anyway, since he knew what they would choose before he even created them.

    And the mini-hims fell for his trick.

    They disobeyed and then the perfect, loving god…kicked the hell out of them. He threw them out of the garden, made them do hard labor, and gave them a death sentence…for falling for his tree trick.

    So whether it his Magical Trick Tree or the magical rolling stone and the empty tomb, the Judeo-Christian god loves to play games with his little mini-hims and hers. It wouldn’t be any fun to give them too much information to make an informed choice. Naw. Just throw enough out there for them to distrust their common sense, logic, reason, and science but not enough evidence that they escape his eternal torture pit…where he gets to punish his little mini-hims and hers for all eternity…for not making the correct free will decisions, which he didn’t have to give them to begin with.

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  9. Hi Gary, I’m pleased to be able to tell you that you have helped me compete some interesting research, and I am now able to reveal to the waiting world the secrets of the GARY METHOD of How to look good on the internet! Yes folks, you would normally pay hundreds of dollars to hear this at a corporate seminar, but as a special on Nate’s blog, I give it to you for free!

    All you have to do is follow these simple 3 step instructions and you too can impress your atheist friends on the internet.

    Step 1. Write a lot of stuff. Don’t worry about checking your facts, just write. But make sure you use sober language that makes it sounds sort of plausible, at least to your atheist friends, many of whom don’t care about facts anyway. If you write enough stuff, you’ll look like you KNOW THINGS, and that is a good look on the internet.

    Step 2. Of course, you’ll run across the occasional PESKY PEDANT who not only cares about facts, but actually uses them. I know, it’s a radical concept, but there’s no accounting for tastes. Worse still, they use actual facts from experts to show that some of the stuff you’ve been saying is nonsense, unfactual. But don’t worry, here’s where the patented GARY METHOD comes into its own. Because we have not one, but six, count ’em, six different ways to deal with facts raised by the pesky pedant without ever having to admit you were wrong. Use one of these each time the pesky pedant appears, but mix ’em up so it isn’t too obvious.

    2.1 Say “This is what I’ve been saying all along!” Of course it won’t be at all, because it’s based on facts and your words haven’t been, but it makes you look like you’re one step ahead of the poor old pesky pedant.

    2.2 Another option is to seem to agree with the pesky pedant. You say “Yes, I agree with you there, it really is …..[add some detail here]” The fun thing is, the statement you use to summarise your agreement really doesn’t agree with the pesky pedant at all, it is just a slight twist on the unfactual stuff you’ve been saying all along. But it doesn’t matter. Few people will bother to check back, you’ll look likes you KNOW STUFF, and you won’t actually have conceded anything at all.

    2.3 Sometimes the simplest thing is just to ignore the pesky pedant’s evidence, change the subject, and keep going. Just like in step 1, it doesn’t matter that this stuff doesn’t have any facts behind it either. Volume of words is what counts, not accuracy. Most people won’t bother to check what was said to refute you, they’ll just be impressed by your new words.

    2.4 But sometimes things can get a little difficult, and you’re going to look bad if you don’t make some attempt to appear to care about facts. But our patented GARY METHOD has this one covered, don’t worry. Do a quick Google search and find a webpage that sort of looks like it might be relevant. Don’t try to find a number of references that give a well-rounded look at the picture, just find one that seems to say what you want it to say. And then copy and paste it into your comments AT GREAT LENGTH. This is the key. If you post enough words by someone else, hardly anyone will bother to read it all, so you can use it to support whatever you want it to say. You will look REALLY GOOD now.

    2.5 This option is a variation on a common theme. Ignore the topic under discussion and direct your attention at the pesky pedant himself or herself. But don’t use crude ad hominems like those who aren’t trained in the GARY METHOD – that is just too crude and won’t make you look good on the internet (except for a few people who you should disregard). No, the subtle thing is to accuse the pesky pedant of believing something they certainly don’t believe, but is plausible enough that they have to respond. This way you divert the discussion away from the matter where you didn’t have any facts. By the time the pesky pedant finishes defending themselves, you can neatly open up a new topic and away we go again!

    2.6 If all else fails, just say as authoritatively as you can something that you’ve said before, but make it sound like you REALLY KNOW. Of course you won’t really know at all, but if you sound confident, that will generally be enough.

    Step 3. Keep going! Like I said, volume of words is what matters. Don’t feel threatened by temporary setbacks. Keep writing confidently and the GARY METHOD will kick in and I guarantee, YOU’LL LOOK GOOD ON THE INTERNET. Trust me.

    As an exercise, I encourage you all to go back through Gary’s recent comments and see how THE MASTER uses the patented GARY METHOD. See if you can find examples of each of the six tactics. I think you can find 5 out of the 6 right here on this thread. If you’re having trouble, I’ll get back and point them out to you, so you too can LOOK GOOD ON THE INTERNET.

    So Gary, now I’ve finished my research, I won’t be discussing with you any more. Perhaps I’ll come back to point out how your recent comments fit these tactics, and then I’ll retire. Hope you enjoyed this expose! 🙂

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  10. PS Gary, I hope you know that was satire, to make points that I would have made, but trying to do it less like a pesky pedant! And I forgot to add that I’m impressed that you read all of Wright’s book – I have several of his books, but none of the really long ones – I just didn’t think I wanted to invest that much time in one book. That’s all.

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  11. Gary -When he made the universe, he could have made humans like he did all the other animals on the planet…without an eternal soul.

    There you go, just making something up. A straw man. Protestants have a terrible time with reading comprehension. And they don’t like to go to the originals, just muck around in their abridgments and their bad translations.

    The Scripture doesn’t say that anything is “eternal”. The best you’ll ever find is “to an unknown time” or “for eons”, which is quite different from “eternal”, as that word is understood in modern English. It is rather like what the Latin word “aeternum” meant to ancient Romans..

    The Scripture DOES say that animals, like men, are “souls”.

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  12. Crown, I fully understand your method of [personal miracles > catholic miracles > catholic God], but thank you for elaborating on that and detailing your exercise in evaluating other religions. I wasn’t implying that you need to do more research, but that I need to because I don’t have the luxury of personal miracles. Specifically, I was trying to explain why the argument of “no ultimate purpose” cannot be a valid reason to disregard naturalism (for me).

    I will continue to research the items you’ve brought up, but it will take time. Thanks in advance for any sources you can provide.

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  13. 3-D negative images don’t form on cloth. Ever. We can’t make them.

    We can, check out this video below, but the tricky part is mimicking what 700 years of aging will do. It’s difficult to know what conditions the cloth has been through (washing, left in the sun, etc.) So yes, that part is impossible.

    [How to Fake the Shroud of Turin, from the Smithsonian Channel on YouTube.]

    As for the 3D image… the raw computer output of the light/dark mapping to 3D is not as impressive as the “enhanced” 3D renderings. But I do think it’s safe to say that the shading on the cloth implies the image was created by using either a real person or a statue.

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  14. Dear UnkleE:

    1. I’m terribly sorry you don’t like my debating style.

    2. As Crown will tell you, don’t call a specialist (in this case, historian Michael Grant) to the witness stand if you don’t know what he is going to say. Grant says the miracle claims of the Gospels (and that would include the Resurrection) are patently nonsense.

    3. If your original claim was that an historian can extract SOME historical information from the Gospels, then you are correct. My contention is that just because there are a few historical facts in the Gospels does not mean that everything else in the Gospels is historical fact, ie, miracles and resurrections.

    4. The historicity of the supernatural claims of the Gospels are the defining issue of whether Jesus was just one of many religious prophets or Lord God of Heaven and Earth. You quote secular historians to support your claim of Jesus existence, but then reject their conclusions that the miracle claims are false.

    You are cherry picking evidence, UnkleE. Drop the miracle claims and just honor Jesus as a great prophet. Then the debate would be over.

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  15. Drop the miracle claims and just honor Jesus as a great prophet. Then the debate would be over.

    Hey Gary-
    I may have missed where you outlined this further in previous comments, but I honestly haven’t had the time this week. Apologies if I’m asking you to repeat yourself.

    Out of curiosity, if you were to “honor Jesus as a great prophet”, what would that look like? Which of his teachings and claims would you “honor”, and how would you “honor” them? What authority would you give him as a “great prophet”, and what would you mean by “prophet” since you don’t seem to believe in a creator? How do we even know he’s a “great prophet” if we can’t trust what was written about him? I have a lot of other questions about that statement, but generally I just see some problems with just stating “accept Jesus as a great prophet” while ignoring some of the claims he made and claims made about him in the NT.

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  16. Hi Josh,

    I personally would not use the term prophet in describing Jesus, I would call him a (mostly) good man who had a very significant impact on human history, but a man who was delusional. He believed he was a prophet of a god, or the messiah, or even (maybe) the Son of God, and I don’t believe that his god, Yahweh, exists. If you believe that you are the son of a ghost that does not exist, you are by every medical definition—delusional…and maybe psychotic.

    I am asking UnkleE to believe in Jesus as a prophet, the messiah, or whatever other religious designation he wants to use other than the resurrected “God the Creator”.

    I asked this question earlier in the thread but no one answered: Did the second person of the Trinity have a body prior to Creation? If you say, no, then the Christian Trinitarian god is not eternal and never-changing as the Bible claims. Where once there were three bodiless spirit persons making up the godhead, now there are two bodiless spirit persons and one embodied God/man person.

    If you say, yes, then what was the purpose of being born if the second person of the Trinity already had an adult male human body? Why not just beam down to the Jordan, let John baptize him, and begin your ministry? What is the need for the whole virgin birth story?

    If Jesus had beamed himself down from heaven, the same way he ascended, in front of a large crowd on the Jordan, I’m sure that more people would have believed in him and thereby would have escaped the flames of Hell. But for some reason, Jesus wanted to do everything secretly, at least according to Mark (although he does just the opposite in John). I guess he went through the whole birth process, infancy, childhood, teenage years, his twenties…just to fit in and lose himself into the crowd more. That way people would have to really, really, really SEEK to find him. Kind of like the kid’s game…HIDE AND SEEK for Jesus

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  18. @Gary M:

    “Insanity is believing your hallucinations are real. Religion is believing that other peoples’ hallucinations are real.”
    — Dan Barker —

    Liked by 1 person

  20. So Gary, now I’ve finished my research, I won’t be discussing with you any more. Perhaps I’ll come back to point out how your recent comments fit these tactics, and then I’ll retire. Hope you enjoyed this expose!

    I don’t know UnkleE, this whole satire comment doesn’t seem like your style and I was kind of surprised when I read it. If you had an instance where something was missed or glossed over, it would have been more effective (for everyone reading along) to have just pointed that specific instance out. If it was all jest or satire then I’m not sure why you added “I won’t be discussing with you anymore”.

    Also, you made a statement about early Christian resurrection beliefs that Arch asked you for evidence on and I don’t see where you replied to it. I’m sure we’ve all done things like this as it is hard to keep up with all the different comments so a satire could probably be done on all us.

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  21. Dave:

    This is exactly what happened to me when I tried to have a conversation with UnkleE on his blog. He would ask me a question, I would answer it, he would say I didn’t answer his question, I would attempt to answer his question again, he would again say I didn’t answer it,…repeat. I would continue to try to answer his question until he would finally insinuate that the reason I am not getting his question is because I am “silly” (an idiot), and tell me he won’t respond to me anymore.

    Does anyone else feel I have avoided answering UnkleE’s questions? If a significant number of you believe I have, I will apologize to UnkleE and attempt to answer his question. (But maybe someone else should explain his question in simple terms that I can understand because for some reason I keep misunderstanding UnkleE.)

    Liked by 1 person

  22. “But, no, he wanted man to have a soul and to have a free will to love him or reject him.” – My concept of free will, Gary, has always involved a multitude of choices, but that sword of Damocles called Hell, rather narrows it down to an either/or proposition, not exactly what I would call free will.

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  23. Yes, Arch, its not much of a free choice, is it?

    Isn’t it odd that a perfect Creator would make a perfect Creation but in making a perfect Creation, he would make an evil, deceiving, walking/talking snake, and allow that evil snake to tempt his perfect-but-possessing-a-free-will little mini-hims?

    If God created an evil snake then evil already existed in the world. So man’s free-will very bad choice, otherwise known as “The Fall”, was not the cause of the presence of Evil in the world. Evil already existed and it was GOD created it. He created evil for the sole purpose of tempting man, knowing that man would fall for the temptation, and knowing even before he created man, that He would brutally punish man for falling for his evil snake’s temptation.

    What a load of crap.

    It is amazing how intelligent adults can be brainwashed to believe this childish, fairy-tale nonsense.

    Liked by 1 person

  24. “Also, you made a statement about early Christian resurrection beliefs that Arch asked you for evidence on and I don’t see where you replied to it.” – You get used to that from theists, Dave.

    Liked by 1 person

  25. I call it the Testament Tap-Dance – when you ask a question they’d rather not answer, they break out into a soft-shoe, usually to the tune of “Tea for Two,” hoping you’ll be so entertained you’ll forget you asked.

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