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.
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.
Finding Truth 
“It is amazing how intelligent adults can be brainwashed to believe this childish, fairy-tale nonsense.” – the REAL imagination-stretcher, is that the Bible’s god, being omniscient and all, knew how his program would play out before he ever hit the Enter key. Why bother? Is he that hard up for entertainment, that he’d watch the equivalent of umpteen centuries of re-runs? I mean, I don’t mind a few old segments of “Magnum P.I.” from time to time, but I’m not up for a marathon, and don’t get me started on “The Brady Bunch”!
In Louis Ginzberg’s 1909 compilation, “Legends of the Jews</em" (hey, with a name like Ginzberg, you can hardly accuse him of anti-Semitism!), Ginzberg relates the legend that from the beginning of time, the ram stood, his horns entangled in brambles on Mt. Moriah, just waiting for Abraham to bring Isaac there for his sacrifice. Now is that omniscience, or what?
But once you've reached the point where you can mouth all of the words to the "Rocky Horror Picture Show," do you really NEED to go see it again?
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Ah man – you leave out one little > and look what happens –!
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My blog is primarily devoted to confronting and debunking fundamentalist Christianity. But the farther I get away from my own involvement in the Christian cult, the more I see the entire Christian belief system, orthodox and liberal, as based on one very ridiculous premise. Here it is:
Premise: Jesus is the Creator of the Universe; He is God; He is eternal; He is the the all-powerful, all-knowing, every-where-present Ruler of Heaven and Earth.
Liberal Christians separate Jesus from the god of the Old Testament. This allows Jesus to be the loving Savior of the world, without bearing any guilt for the barbaric real or imaginary behavior of the Old Testament God. And, the most liberal of Christians, universalists, do not believe in Hell. Everyone will be saved in the end.
So what could be bad about this liberal Christian worldview?
Here is the problem: If Jesus is God; if Jesus is all-knowing and eternal; then Jesus knew, when he created the world, that for tens of thousands of years, billions of human men, women, and children would endure lives of horrific suffering from disease, starvation, rape, child abuse, war, natural disasters, and other forms of violence. Yet the loving Jesus created the world anyway.
Why?
Was he bored?
What kind of a sick, psychopath tortures helpless little creatures to entertain himself and prevent being bored? If Jesus were really loving, he would never have created us to begin with. He would have continued his eternal existence keeping busy with organizing and reorganizing heaven. He didn’t have to create us.
So which is more likely to be true, my friends: That the kind, gentle, forgiving Jesus of the Gospels is really a sick, psychopath, or, that Jesus was just a man…a man whom his followers turned into a miracle-working god after his death?
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Hav you seen either of these, Gary?
There’s some interesting stuff in there, including some more recent developments regarding William G. Dever that even I didn’t know, and I thought I was up on my Dever.
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Coincidence? I happened to watch part 1 last night Arch.
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I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. Isaiah 45:7 kjv
god not only admits, but boasts that he created evil.
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how does an all knowing jeeezzzuuusssss keep himself from being bored?
he makes dead lizards and rats spring back to life in the hands of Crown.
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“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.”
Hi Dave, I don’t want to spend too much time on this, but I’d like to explain it to you. I didn’t have one instance where something was missed or glossed over, I had multiple instances. I’ll just mention a few (as I said I would).
In this discussion on my blog I had to several times (you can read it and see) explain to Gary that he was saying things about me that I didn’t think (case 2.5). His comment on APR 04, 2015 @ 08:10:09 contains several of these. Then he indicated an author I quoted as an authority was from the first half of the 20th century when his book was written in 1996 (case 2.6). Several times when shown to be wrong he didn’t admit it, just changed the subject (2.3).
Then on this thread, I have just done a rough count of the cases my satire outlined – 1 of #1, 1 of #2.1, 4 of 2.2, 1 of 2.3, 1 of 2.4, 3 of 2.5 and 2 of 2.6. If you wanted to chase a couple of examples, see my comment of 6:21 pm on 20 April.
Or check out where Gary made the confident statement: “I challenge you to find a secular history book that states these details as historical fact and not speculation or at best a probability.” Then when I gave him two (April 22, 2015 at 2:52 am), there was no recognition that I had met his challenge and he was mistaken, he just morphed into another discussion, just like in 2.3. (I don’t want to be tedious so I won’t detail any more, but I have a list and can do so if you wish.)
So, my satire was an attempt to be humorous and creative, but the problems were real, and to my mind serious. Gary writes a lot, but in discussion with me, he rarely checked his facts, made outrageously wrong statements that he couldn’t justify and I could show to be factually wrong, preferred to change the subject rather than admit he was wrong, and when he did look for references, typically found one that supported his view and quoted it to death without looking at the other side.
So if someone did all that to you, would you patiently continue to point each error out, only to have your evidence ignored, or would you give up?
“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.”
No, I didn’t miss it, I can’t answer everything, and I didn’t think that was important. But since you ask …..
Most scholars believe Jesus’ followers had some sort of visionary experience of Jesus after his death, so straightaway we can conclude they believed in the resurrection right from the beginning. Then we know Paul talked about it in his letters, claims to have seen the risen Jesus himself and to have discussed belief with the apostles. Scholars have taken a particular interest in several hymns or statements of faith in the New Testament (e.g. Philippians 2:6-11, 1 Corinthians 15:1-8) which talk about the resurrection. Judging by the way they are introduced as well-known texts, scholars say these were written earlier and had become standard. That makes them very early. So that’s another indicator.
Bart Ehrman, a well known atheist/agnostic has written: “For it is a historical fact that some of Jesus’ followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution.” I think Ehrman’s view is the consensus of scholars.
Thanks for your question.
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Hi Gary, I read your several replies but I won’t be responding for the reasons I’ve given. I don’t think anything I say will change anything. You are free to write whatever you like, and I am free to decide if I will reply. I hate this sort of criticism and personal discussion and I’m not going to say any more about all this if I can help it.
But I did want to say that I’m sorry to talk about you when I know you are present. That isn’t a nice thing, but I wanted to answer Dave’s question and implied criticism.
Best wishes to you.
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Hi UnkleE,
Thanks for explaining that. I haven’t read any of the discussions you and Gary had on your own blog so I guess I was missing that part. I agree with your initial criticism of Gary’s statement “I challenge you to find a secular history book that states these details as historical fact”. Nothing in history is a fact so his comment was fluff, and you had pointed that out.
Reading some of the other comments you’ve made to each other on this thread I think you’ve both been talking past each other. I think Gary, for the most part, has been speaking about the gospels with “miracles” in mind, while you’ve been speaking about things that almost all scholars agree on: Jesus existed, he was a teacher, he had disciples, he was crucified by the romans, etc. So, when Gary says something like “All other information about him [Jesus] is speculation.”, I took that as referring to all of the miracles, virgin birth, etc. and you countered with “The four historians all say you are wrong here. They all say there is much we can know.” and I don’t think you are referring to miracles as he is. I could be wrong, but that’s what it seemed like.
I agree that at the time of Paul’s writings we have evidence of belief in visionary experiences. It should be noted that the early beliefs could have been more of a belief in a “spiritual resurrection” rather than a “physical resurrection”.
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I don’t want to beat this dead horse too much more, but let me say this in regard to my previous statement, ““I challenge you to find a secular history book that states these details as historical fact and not speculation or at best a probability.”
I have said all along in this discussion that I have no issue with considering Jesus’ existence, his ministry as an apocalyptic prophet, his crucifixion, and his followers’ belief in his resurrection as “history”. My point has always been that the rest of the Gospels cannot be considered historical, in particular the miracle claims, primarily because the authorship of these books is anonymous. Christians want to give the Gospels undue credibility as historically reliable texts to give respectability to their jump into fantasyland that the miracle claims, in particular, the Resurrection, have some credibility as historical events.
I say its baloney. And I say that this is exactly what UnkleE has been attempting to do all along. Instead of just saying, “Gary, I agree that much of the Gospels cannot be considered history, but you will agree that there are some basic claims about Jesus that we can consider historical, such as his existence, his ministry, his crucifixion, his followers’ belief in his resurrection”, right?” I would have said yes, and that would have been the end of it.
UnkleE has engaged in passive aggressive behavior as a smoke screen to avoid having to admit that his leap to believing in a supernatural Resurrection has no historical evidence to support it other than assumptions and second century hearsay. His “blessings” at the end of his comments is the classic passive aggressive Christian expression for “F-You!”.
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UnkleE,
I just read the comments that you linked to on your blog and now have a better understanding of why you’d be upset. I think Gary made the mistake of thinking you were just like every other “fundamentalist” Christian, which you’re not. He also did not answer your five questions.
Gary,
I know what it’s like to have a chip on your shoulder and feel like you’ve been burned by the church. You feel like you’ve been lied to your entire life. Fundamentalist Christians make the terrible mistake of teaching children the Bible as if it were 100% factual, literal truth. Then these kids grow up and realize that it’s just a belief, not a fact. This can create bitterness, which is an emotion, and now we have to struggle to try and rise above that. I won’t pretend to have mastered that, but I will tell you that it does lessen over time.
Crown, Brandon, Josh and UnkleE: I really appreciate you guys that stick around and add to the discussion. Nate’s blog would be pretty boring with just skeptics preaching to the choir. Now I’ll stop trying to keep the peace (wasn’t that supposed to be Ryan’s job? where is he?).
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Dave-
Thanks for the encouragement. I think it’s probably good for everyone to listen to ideas different than their own.
Gary-
I don’t disagree with much of what you write. What I don’t particularly appreciate is the way you deliberately try to incite defensive comments with inflammatory language. I suspect others feel the same. I have openly stated that my beliefs are in part faith and hope. I understand why you and others don’t believe, but I sometimes don’t understand why there is such vitriol for people who come on this site to defend their beliefs. This site invites that kind of discussion, and unfriendly comments, from either side, are unfortunate on a site inviting that discussion. If you want to just bash how sill Christians are and stupid for believing, maybe you should keep to your own blog? Or, if that is to be the nature of this blog now, maybe we should learn to exit the discussion.
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Below is the initial discussion with UnkleE on his blog. He did ask me five questions involving misquoting him on a article he wrote. It is true, I did not go back and answer those five questions. But what I did do was simply apologize for misquoting him. If I admit an error in misquoting him, must I still go back and try to justify my initial misquoting of him??
Josh: I don’t think you will find any comment from me on this blog where I call Christians stupid or evil. You will find plenty of my comments where I refer to the Christian belief system as stupid and evil. You need to understand that I do not find your belief system as an innocuous superstitious belief, as say, believing in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. Your supernatural belief system is responsible for the misery, suffering, and deaths of millions of people over the last 2,000 years and it is still causing suffering and discrimination at this very moment. I consider it one of the greatest evils on the planet. And even more broadly, the belief in the supernatural, whether Christian, Muslim, or Hindu, is the cause of sane, educated young men flying airplanes into skyscrapers and beheading and burning alive other human beings. The fight against this evil should not be sugar coated. It must be confronted head on, forcefully and bluntly. That doesn’t mean we attack Christians as individuals, but we should and will attack your superstitious belief system. I can make no apologies for that.
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Initial discussion from UnkleE’s blog:
Gary:
Let’s look at the story of the Ascension of Jesus:
When he (Jesus) had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. 11 They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” -The Bible
If you lived in the first century AD and believed that heaven was just on the other side of the firmament or “ceiling” above the earth, then it would be very consistent with your worldview to believe that if Jesus was going to return to heaven, all he had to do was to ascend past the clouds and he would soon reach the “ceiling” of the firmament, to which are hung the planets, the sun, and moon, and he then would pierce the firmament to enter heaven. And if one can look up and see the planets and stars, then these heavenly objects must be within a day’s travel time. You would know this by common sense: if you can see a mountain in the distance, chances are you can reach it in a day’s time. So believing that Jesus could ascend to heaven, at a speed slow enough for his disciples to watch him ascend into the clouds, would be completely consistent with this world view.
The problem for the Bible, and for Christians who believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of the Creator, is that this worldview has been proven absolutely false by modern science.
UnkleE:
Hi Gary, thanks for reading and commenting, But I hate to disappoint you, but scientists have proved nothing of the sort. I don’t believe the Bible is inerrant, but even if I did the science you allude to is no threat to that view. You see, you are not the first to think of this.
Gary:
So are you saying that the Bible’s supernatural claim of an Ascension (the levitation of a human body into outer space) should be believed as metaphorical, but, the Bible’s supernatural claim that a first century Jewish prophet’s decomposing corpse was reanimated by an invisible god, walked out of his grave with a superman-like body that could walk through locked doors, appear and disappear to followers, and sit down to eat a broiled fish lunch with his buddies—should be accepted as a real, historical event??
UnkleE:
Hi Gary, no I’m not saying that at all. Have you read the ascension accounts lately?
Luke 24:51: “While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven.”
Acts 1:9: “After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.”
You’ll notice straightaway that there’s no mention of “outer space” in either of these accounts, and certainly nothing like “outer reaches of the universe to enter heaven”. Luke (the writer in both cases) simply says “he left them”, he was “taken up” and “a cloud hid him”. The end result was he returned to God in heaven. Luke’s account is sober and simple. The only metaphorical thing in it, as the CS Lewis quote indicates, is the idea that upwards movement was necessary to get to heaven. So you have been exaggerating, and it is hard to take those exaggerated comments seriously.
Likewise the resurrection accounts are generally literal and I find them believable and historical.
Gary:
When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. 11 They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” –the first chapter of Acts
I don’t see your point.
Of course the author of Luke and Acts didn’t talk about outer space. He believed there was a canopy over the earth, a firmament. However, the simple reading of the text indicates that heaven is upward above the earth and that Jesus ascended to get there. The text also says that the disciples watched Jesus “as he was going”.
Bottom line: If heaven is up, beyond the firmament as many verses in Genesis, Job, and other OT books claim, and Jesus was going up to it slower than the speed of light…Jesus ain’t there yet!!
I get the feeling that you are a believer in the modern concept that Heaven and Hell are in another “dimension”. If so, you have no biblical basis for believing this other than the unease of being trapped in a corner over the literal reading of your ancient holy book.
UnkleE:
“I don’t see your point.”
It should be quite clear. You don’t think Jesus went into space, I don’t think he did, no-one of that day did, and I’d be very surprised if anyone did today. But you extrapolate way beyond what people actually think so you can mock and misrepresent things. Do you think such an approach presents your scepticism in a good light?
“you have no biblical basis for believing this”
It may be a surprise to you, but not everything I believe has a “Biblical basis”. I accept what the historians and the language experts say, and what scientists say in their areas of expertise. So although the Bible somewhere (I’m told) says that the circumference of a circle is 3 times the diameter, I accept this is an approximation and that the more accurate answer is pi. So here I think Jesus ascended for a short distance to make clear that he was returning to his father, and then a cloud covered him and he was gone to another “world”. That’s not too hard to understand or imagine.
You have a strange way of interacting with people Gary. If I met someone I disagreed with and wanted to point out where I thought they were wrong, I would try to understand what they thought first (not assume silly things about them that turn out to be wrong), then I’d try to engage thoughtfully with their views. That way I’d hope they’d at least appreciate the thought I’d put into things and consider what I had to say. Why not try that approach with me?
Gary:
So you do believe that heaven is in another dimension. Please demonstrate evidence that any Christian believed this concept at any time prior to the Enlightenment.
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Gary-
It’s also responsible for a lot of good. It’s the people, not the beliefs. People of all beliefs or nonbelief are capable of incredible evil.
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Josh: Christians have been persecuting and murdering “infidels” and “heretics” from 325 AD onward.
Muslim fundamentalists like Hamas and ISIS provide social welfare and medical care for people too. But they also murder and discriminate against infidels and heretics, just like Christians have for most of the last 2,000 years.
Just because an evil organization does some good, does not make it good.
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“It’s the people, not the beliefs.”
It is odd to me that a group of people who allegedly have the spirit of a God living within them behave no better, and often much worse, than the pagan unbelievers around them. Surely Christian behavior throughout history should be noticeably better if God Himself indwells them, over and above that of Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, but I for one do not see it.
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I believe that many moderate and liberal Christians are eager to whitewash, explain-away, and even condemn the evil committed in the Bible, ordered and/or condoned by their God, and the bloody history of Christianity for the last 2,000 years, in order to maintain social respectability for their continued belief in a world governed by the supernatural.
But it is exactly this fundamental concept that must be exposed as superstitious nonsense and given no social respectability. Only then will the hate and sectarianism of religion fade into the annuls of history. I hope for the day when parents will refuse to teach their children about gods and devils, just as they now refuse to teach them about ghosts and goblins.
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Gary, I think the problem lies in personalities. The way each of us was raised (and I’m not talking about religious training), how life has treated us over the years, what type of difficulties we’ve had to deal with … all of these things and more affect how one “sees God” and thereby emulates “Him.”
Not everyone agrees, but many believe violence is almost certainly entrenched in human nature. Thus, even when God/Jesus is supposedly present, the loving and benevolent nature associated with “Him” may still be overshadowed by our “natural” state.
Although religion would like to take credit for helping us be more “God-like,” essentially, we are what we are. As one person said:
Source: http://aeon.co/magazine/society/human-beings-do-not-have-an-instinct-for-war/
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I understand your point, Nan.
What I am trying to get across to Christians is that there is overwhelming evidence that Judeo-Christianity does not and has never upheld “universal, objective, never-changing moral standards”. Christian morality, as does secular morality, changes with the times and events of history. There is no external proof of the indwelling of a god within Christians. The only evidence is subjective: Christians believe in this internal presence by their feelings, intuition, or blind faith.
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“Coincidence? I happened to watch part 1 last night Arch.” – It could only be a miracle, on the scale of having a dove fly into your head!
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“Christian morality, as does secular morality, changes with the times and events of history.” – In other words, Gary, it evolves – Oooh, I just said a dirty word!
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Gary is right!
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“Reading some of the other comments you’ve made to each other on this thread I think you’ve both been talking past each other.”
Yes, I’m sure you’re right. I try always to distinguish between what historians conclude is historical fact (recognising that no historical fact is “certain”, just probable) and the beliefs I then hold based on those facts. I don’t think gary recognised that distinction, and I think he generally tried to minimise what the historians say.
Anyway, thanks for your continually thoughtful approach to all this.
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