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 
Here you are, Nate, it was easier to find than I thought —
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Note: “others include it in the Gospel of Luke (placing it after Luke 21:38)
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I always wished that sermons had question-and-answer sessions at the end, I’d go to church far more often (last time was 1969) if they did.
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And tell Janelle I said ‘hi’ – she’s a sweetheart (= she “Likes” my comments) —
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Thanks for that reference, arch! 🙂
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William and Nate, thanks all for your responses.
Nate I think your reason for wanting to attend or listen is fine though as for me, let me be accused of whatever crime it is, but unless they can show how a man could eat a whale and throw up after 3 days, am not attending.
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Mak – 🙂
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Carmen I would be lying to myself or them if I told them am going to learn something new.
We can’t mix the gods. Either it is the god of the Bible or some nebulous idea they are talking about but not both
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Isn’t today also Passover? You all remember Passover —
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Hey Nate,
Another heartfelt post — so open and sharing. Very cool.
Best wishes on all that.
I went through all that 30 years ago, so it is hard to remember.
And I had the benefit of moving all over the planet and leaving behind those with whom I had the religious connections. So I had physical and theological distance — they helped each other.
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I did a little study on the passage you briefly mentioned at the end of your post (and which occupied many of your commenters) – John 7:53-8:11. From what I saw, many commentators who uphold the authority and inerrancy of Scripture, would admit that this story is not original to the Gospel of John. However, they would also agree that it seems to be an authentic recording of an actual event in the life of Jesus.
I am OK with that and still holding to inerrancy of the Scriptures (in their original autographs, as the typical definition goes). We have an extremely reliable manuscript for the New Testament thanks to the unheralded work of textual scholars. I find the evidence for the Resurrection, for example, to be overwhelmingly supportive. Obviously, many of you have not weighed it out similarly. Frankly, I find the typical suggestions explaining away the Resurrection, its many witnesses, the conversion of its opponents, and the startling growth of the early church to be much more fanciful and irrational.
However, your original post was much more personal than just a discussion of this one textual concern. It does pain me to hear about strife within your family. I do think the Christian faith and Scriptures can (and should) be ably defended. But dealing with these involved, battle-of-the-experts kind of debates is not a simple task. I do hope that there will be true reconciliation within your family. Let the love of God prevail.
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Sabio — thanks for the kind comment!
You know, my wife and I actually talked about moving for a while after our deconversion. But we love the town we live in and finally decided to stay. I’m glad we did, because we eventually made a new circle of friends, and I have some extended family in the area that really took us in. But it’s true — some aspects of hanging around did make it difficult.
Thanks. It was great to hear from you again 🙂
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Hi Sean,
Thanks so much for the kind words! Yeah, I do hope that things get better with the family. We’ve gotten into a decent routine over the last several years, but it’s nothing like the way it used to be.
Thanks for weighing in on this. I’m not sure about their explanation though. I mean how they would know if it was an actual event or not? And even if it were, doesn’t this still lead to the question of why God didn’t inspire one of the gospel writers to record this event? And if it was added by a later scribe, was that individual inspired as well? It seems strange to me to think that God could inspire something, but then be okay with it being edited. Why would God ever need to edit anything? And if someone did it without God’s authority, what does that mean?
As far as the NT manuscripts go, I agree with you about them being very reliable. Aside from a few issues, I think the translations we have today are likely very close to the original autographs. Even so, there are contradictions within the different accounts that raise huge questions for inspiration, in my opinion. And the majority of scholars to not believe that the gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, which causes additional problems. While I’m very confident that the authors believed the things they were writing, they were not passing on information that they gained firsthand. I mean, the resurrection accounts are actually some of the most conflicting sections of the New Testament. In fact, this recent post provides a great infographic that sums up the major issues.
It’s been my experience that these kinds of claims actually break down in the details. After all, what witnesses are there to the resurrection, other than the gospels? And which opponents were converted? As to the growth of the early church, I don’t find it all that hard to believe. There’s actually a really good article on it here, if you’re interested.
Thanks again for the great comment — I really appreciate your weighing in. Take care! 🙂
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I have come to the conclusion that it is virtually impossible for skeptics/non-believers to have a productive debate with conservative Christians regarding the validity of the Bible and its supernatural claims. The reason is that we do not share a common starting point for a debate on these issues.
The skeptic looks at evidence and forms an hypothesis/conclusion. The conservative Christian forms a conclusion from an ancient holy book and then looks at the evidence to confirm that conclusion. To come to any consensus, either the skeptic must accept the ancient Christian holy book as absolute fact and the source for all truth or the conservative Christian must agree to abandon his preformed conclusions, look at the evidence with an open mind, and allow the evidence to speak for itself. Neither side is willing to do this.
So why do I continue to engage conservative Christians on their “inerrant” views? My hope is that with every exposure to the evidence, one small chunk in the armor of their faith (superstition) is chipped away and that one day they will see their belief system for what it really is: ancient superstitious nonsense.
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Gary,
How do you approach Christian commentary that does not come from the ancient book but comes from direct miracle?
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Same here, Gary – but I also do it for the undecideds who may be lurking.
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Hi Crown,
I left this response to a conservative Christian who said that she had heard God speak to hear in an audible voice and other claims of supernatural experiences, which to her, confirmed the existence of the Christian god:
I’m sure your experience was very real, Terri. The problem is, Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, and many others can recount the same intense feelings, intuitions, miracles, and personal experiences involving prayers and worship of their gods. So how do we choose which of these believers’ feelings, intuitions, and experiences are due to the one true God, and which of these people simply had an intense emotional experience, delusion, seizure, or hallucination?
I do not discount the possibility of the supernatural. However, there are thousands upon thousands of supernatural beliefs on this planet. It just doesn’t seem like a good barometer of truth to measure the validity of these supernatural claims by accepting someone else’s intense experience as proof. I demand more evidence than someone else’s feelings, intuition, and personal experiences to believe ANY supernatural claim.
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Well, I can’t possibly read all the comments I see here, and I’m sure you don’t expect me to. Thanks for that. My wife and I just got back from seeing movie: Insurgent. I still say those books have a Christian message. Christians do not fit the worldly molds people want them to. We diverge and supersede. In my opinion, we’re not the problem, we’re the answer. But be that as it may, I found the info on the woman caught in adultery as a footnote in my Amplified Bible. Scripture says it would require so many books to be written to contain all the things Jesus did. Maybe some translator thought this one encounter from something someone wrote needed to be in there. I don’t know, but as the “original” manuscripts prove, we don’t have perfect translators, so we dig and search out truth. Most people are not interested in the deeper things. They will never search these things out. Their loss in my opinion. Some people are satisfied with the “Gospel” only. And I would say that is the most important part. I’m sure there were things written concerning Jesus that never made it into authorized scripture. Even the Catholic Bible accepts more books than the King James does. But if I find something that seems to be contradictory, you are right, I approach it from the perspective that I’m missing something. So I begin to dig deeper. In this case I found the Amplified Bible freely acknowledging the decision the translators had to make concerning that encounter with the woman. However, this is not to say that the translators were not good at what they did, just because they were not perfect. When the book of Isaiah was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, they compared it to newer copies of the book and found them to be completely accurate. So yes, there may be a couple minor scriptures that appear to be not quite the same, but sometimes we simply don’t understand Jewish ways. Some people get tripped up over the two genealogies of Christ, and do not realize one is the line of Joseph, and the other Mary. Also, the Jews sometimes omitted the name of someone who brought shame to their nation, or for the sake of making memorization easier. There are many explanations, but few people are really interested in digging so deep. The average congregation would probably fall asleep on these details, sorry to say.
I know we will tire of running around and around this same bush. And I have probably given you enough examples of other explanations to things you consider to be absolutely contradictory. I do believe the Bible to be what it claims to be, and I do believe the translators did a great job, but not perfect, and scholars have continued to work at that perfection. I still believe evidence weighs heavily towards O. J. murdering his wife, and I don’t believe an explosion of “any kind”, whether swelling, shrinking, belching, hiccupping, cooling, heating, or tap dancing could have ever created what we are living. I love this artist called, God. And I want to know him better.
Now back to the movie. You see, the world wants us to fit into one of their molds, and when we don’t, they want to shut us up, discredit and lie about us, they see us dangerous when they are the ones attacking us. We should all live and let live. That would be nice, but alas, human nature does get in the way, because we’re not perfect. But a “Holy Standard” is not the problem, it is the solution. And should any man determine that standard? Why should I submit to what you think is right, or any other man? The Creator has set a standard, and as to be expected, man has a problem with it. But what should the pot say to the potter? Go ahead, say it if it makes you feel better, but it changes nothing. We think so highly of our intelligence, but we’re still just the pot, and the spiritual clock of Israel keeps on ticking.
Hope I have not bored you. I’m done running around the bush. I didn’t mean to get back involved. I guess I need to get you out of my email. And why is my Internet still up? We’re trying to figure that out ourselves. (hee-hee.) We don’t know why. It’s supposed to be canceled. Our Comcast shut down days ago, but for some reason this darn Internet is still up. Maybe my wife miscommunicated something. We’re looking into it, because we really do want to get rid of this bill. Maybe you can let SPG know about that. Did he pray?
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@Thee
I think this applies to you – http://apastasea.blogspot.sg/2013/10/the-will-to-believe-and-will-to-know.html?m=1
Obviously you are extremely satisfied that one geneology refers to Joseph’s line while the other points to Mary. Omigosh where have you been all my life, if only I spoke to you earlier you would have been able to clear all the doubts and queries I had when I was in theological college.
Or not.
How about you get less pompous and thinking that your knowledge is so special when it is barely beyond Sunday school stuff and basically apologetics 101. I would be appalled if any of the other readers here haven’t heard what you’ve said before.
On a separate note, what’s miraculous is not the fact that you still have Internet, but rather you still sticking around after bidding adios in another thread.
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Hi Gary M
I am impressed by your analysis of the situation and your preparedness to engage with others.
The experiential side of religion is very subjective and is an issue I struggled with for some time. It seemed to me to provide proof that overrode concerns about the Bible and Church history. However when we come to understand that people of all religions have these experiences it points to them being more likely physiological than truly supernatural (given the competing claims of various religions).
I recall a talk from Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones in regard to speaking with tongues. He noted a religious revival in part of Africa. There were two regions affected in one of them the matter of tongues had been taught but not in the other. After the revival tongues was only manifested in the area where it had been taught. This suggested it was more likely a psychological rather than a supernatural manifestation.
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Hi Powell,
For what it’s worth, I don’t think thee is trying to be arrogant. I think he writes in a conversational style — kind of reminds me of a good ol’ Southern boy. I have a lot of relatives and friends like that, so he doesn’t rub me the wrong way. I think he’s just being matter-of-fact.
I do agree with you on the genealogies thing though, and I’m gonna bring that up to him.
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Hi thee,
Thanks for the comment — glad you’re still checking in.
Yeah, we view things differently. Not sure that there’s a way around that. The genealogies that you mentioned, for instance. I’m aware of the claim that one is through Joseph and one is through Mary, but how does anyone know? Here’s Matthew 1:15-16:
And here’s Luke 3:23-24:
Both claim to be through Joseph. Did you know that there’s another explanation that says both genealogies are for Joseph, but one is a levirate marriage?
Basically, this is a case of having no idea how to explain the different genealogies, so just throw whatever you can at it and see what sticks. Does that sound like the work of an omnipotent God? After all, if one of these explanations solved the problem, why didn’t the Bible provide us with that explanation?
Throughout the Bible, we keep getting things like this. It’s not that outsiders and skeptics create problems, the Bible creates its own problems. This is what I found so troubling in my final days as a Christian.
Hope that makes sense… I’d be interested in any thoughts about it you might have.
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@Nate
Yeah perhaps I’m reading the tone off. Incidentally my boss is a southern guy, but he doesn’t give me the same vibe nor talks in the same way. Funnily he does remind me of you though, very gentle and caring, mostly upright and wants to do the right thing (very rare considering that we are traders working in a financial firm)
Also incidentally he’s an atheist. (Or maybe this have to do with him working in NY since graduating). But I also joke about him being a typical American Boy Scout. Superman style.
So yes I recognize a nice guy when I see one, but certainly I’ll tone down my own doucheness towards thee especially since you have spoken up for him. Will be the last you hear from me about him.
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Thanks man. And I could totally be off in my assessment. Guess we’ll see 😉
Hey, and thanks for the compliment!
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When thee-n-counter says “Most people are not interested in the deeper things. They will never search these things out.” the implication as I read it is that those of us who’ve been there done that never went deep enough. Is there a bottom to this deepness before we hit pay dirt?
Every thing he wrote is something I once believed and read and studied and was taught and then I kept going deeper and look where that got me? One could in turn say that you thee-n-counter haven’t gone deeper.
Or is thee-n-counter referring to his fellow Christians?
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