Why I am Agnostic
sent in by Derek
My decision to become agnostic did not happen overnight. It took several years before I came to realize exactly what I believed. I grew up believing Christianity was fact so it took time for me to kill that virus that had infected my mind. I hate to be harsh for those of you who are Christian reading this. But that is what I believe Christianity is: a virus of the mind. My hope is that you will read this article and hopefully it will allow you to question what you believe. I can't imagine anyone would want to believe in something that is not true. You don't believe the moon is made of cheese? or do you? I challenge you to read this article with an open mind. Explore the questions and really stop and think about them. Why do you believe what you believe? Do you know why? I sincerely only want to be where the truth is. If someone can convince me that Christianity, or any other religion is truth, then I want to be there. But unless I have concrete evidence I can't just go on blind faith.
Let me give you a little bit of background. I grew up in a non-traditional Christian Mennonite family. You would not have known we were Mennonite based on our family lifestyle. We dressed and looked like a typical American family. I went to public school, watched most things on TV, played games, had a very fun childhood. At home we said a quick prayer before meals. In public restaurants we did not pray. I guess my parents were ashamed??? We went to church on Sunday mornings. I attended youth activities which did included bible studies as well as fun activities such as ski trips, water parks, etc. That was pretty much it. I never saw my dad read or carry a bible. My mom was more religious than he was but even she really didn't talk much about it. Religion was pretty much in the background for me growing up. On the surface we appeared to be an average American family.
In my teen years I had always assumed Christianity was truth because that's how my parents raised me. Going to church each Sunday I had assumed the stories I learned were fact. The pastors and leaders of the church presented the material as fact. My parents believed it, so why shouldn't I? I had no reason not to believe it as an early youngster learning many new things. The great thing about church was that I didn't need to pay attention all the time. It was like school that didn't have tests. So I didn't really worry or care to much about it. I enjoyed spending time with other friends at church and that was my focus.
In my early twenties I continued to assume Christianity was truth. And in my mid twenties I started to become more serious about it. I never questioned it for the simple reason that my parents had brought me up to believe it. I thought Jesus was just as historically accurate as George Washington is. I never once questioned its validity. SO I continued to attend church and became very religious during my twenties. During that time I wouldn't have considered myself religious. I was just trying to do the best I could at following what I had believed to be God's truth. I prayed to god, memorized scripture, and I was very active in the church.
I didn't question the historical accuracy of Christianity until my early thirties. One Sunday at church our pastor mentioned the fact that the Bible is not in every country in the world. He stressed that we must work hard to present the bible into every country so all could hear Gods word. Up until that point in my life I had assumed that the bible was in every country of the world. I had assumed that every person on this earth had heard about Jesus and was given the chance to accept him or reject him. If you accept it you go to heaven. If you reject it you go to hell as the bible says. But if not every person on earth is given the chance to believe as my pastor indicated, what kind of system is that? It doesn't sound right to me. Instinctively I believe God is a fair God that loves all his Children. Just as we love our own children that we as parents are responsible for. SO damning someone to hell because of life upbringings beyond their control seems absurd to me. This really influenced me to start researching the religion deeper because I was really starting to question its validity.
This started my years of skepticism (in my early 30s) of the validity of Christianity. I stepped aside and assumed everything I learned about Christianity was wrong. I pretended as though I was an alien from another planet coming to earth for the first time. From this perspective I am presented with thousands of religions. So many that it would be impossible to research all of them. Unless I wanted to devote all of my free time to this type of research. But with life as busy as it is, it would still take a lifetime to do that. I did spend a few years researching and it consumed much of my free time. I started to look into various religions to see what they had to say. Not one convinced me they had the truth. I looked into just about every Christian denomination, as well as Mormonism, Jehovah witnesses, Jain, Muslim, Hinduism, Buddhism, Wicca. I went from church to church Sunday after Sunday and I sat and observed the congregations and listened to the sermons. At the end of the sermons I'd go talk to the pastor and would usually sit down in his office to discuss religious beliefs. I had many questions... Not one Pastor could answer my questions without sounding like allot of fluff. Here are my questions and concerns I presented to pastors as well as people in the congregations:
Basically, these are ten reasons/concepts why I'm an ex-Christian...
1) Why do you believe what you believe? The majority of people will give an answer based on their bible. Or they will say its how they were raised. Why do you believe in the bible? Why do you assume your parents are correct in what they have taught you? You have to get to the root of what you believe. What makes the Bible real to you? Most Christians can't answer this other than it was passed down from generation to generation and is a very old book. So what!! Grimm's fairy tales are old. But I don't believe that to be truth. How do you know its truth? Most will say you must have faith. Or even blind faith. That is not good enough for me. I must have evidence. Especially since we are dealing with the supernatural. I should sense some kind of supernatural experience and that is simply not the case. I think people fool themselves into believing they have such an experience. But it is really only a virus of the mind affecting their thought.
2) IF the Bible has not made it into all the countries of this world, that means people are damned to hell for reasons beyond their control. That thought really troubles my mind. The bible says you must come to Jesus in order to make it into heaven. It seems very illogical that God would send millions of people to hell because they never got a chance to hear his word. How can you believe something as horrible as this? Christianity claims to be a supernatural phenomena. IF this is the case, then I think EVERYONE on this planet should have access to it. God in all his infinite powers should give EVERYONE a chance to hear his word. I shouldn't have to search hard for it. It should be as readily available as the morning sun is on a hot summer day. But that is simply not the case. I can't accept the fact that God would send innocent people like this to hell. When I talk to Christians about this concept they say we can't know what God would do in a situation like this. God may in fact save his children if they are not given the chance. However that is NOT what my bible says. The bible clearly indicates you must come to Jesus in order to be granted access to heaven.
3) We as children often follow what our parents teach us out of instinct. I grew up assuming Christianity was truth because that is how I was raised. My neighbor grew up atheist and assumed that as truth because of how she was raised. Our distant neighbors in other countries grew up believing Muslim, Hindu, etc was truth because of how they were raised. Its often difficult to convert someone to your line of thinking (no matter what it is) because of how they were raised. Do you believe in Christianity because that is how you were raised? Or did you really think about its origins and how it came to be. If Christianity is 100% truth as it claims to be, is it fair to be raised in a family that does not teach it? Which means the chances of a Hindu or Muslim converting to Christianity is slim to none. Is that fair? Not at all!!! And you can't blame the people that were raised outside of Christianity. Yet that is what happens because the bible says these people will burn in hell. It doesn't matter how good you are. If you do not come to Jesus and accept him as your savior, you will burn in hell according to the bible. So according to Christianity, my good friend that believes in the religion called Jain is going to hell. Even though he is a moral individual and believes 100% in his religion because that is what he was raised to believe.
4) Why are there so many Christian denominations? If the bible is perfect as it claims, then we should not have any mis-enterpretations. But as you know, that's why we have different denominations. Because one group interprets various scriptures differently than another. IT seems to me that if we have a perfect book as it claims to be, there should be only ONE denomination called Christianity and that's it. Or God in his magnificent power should set it right and tear down the walls of uncertainty! I can understand the Christian concept that God has given us free will, so we can make our own decisions and lead our own lives in order to accept or reject Christianity. And if this is a true concept, then I would expect the religion itself, and the people that organize and lead it to have unity. Otherwise there is much confusion about which church to attend as a new comer. What is Baptist? What is Mennonite? What is Methodist? Why not just ALL CHRISTIAN!! That would make more sense. But seeing there is so much confusion amongst the believers makes me question the validity of the religion itself. And I've discussed with many non-Christians raised atheist or agnostic and they are so confused looking at all of it they don't even want to think about attending. To them it looks as bad as a satanic church does to a Christian. A Christian wouldn't step foot into a satanic church. Neither does a non-Christian want to step foot into a Christian church. Both are appalling to the individual. Its all a matter of perspective.
5) The bible talks about the Holy Spirit which Christians pray and communicate to. Even during my religious years it always bothered me that prayer always seemed so one sided. I would pray to God, but not hear words back to me like when speaking in a normal conversation to someone. How do you hear God when you pray? Most Christians say you must quiet your mind and listen. Well sure I can do that, and I did. I would claim I heard revelations from God as a Christian. But now I know I was only fooling myself when I did that. Watch the movie "Saved" and you'll see how God can speak to you. Christians will say you can tell what your hearing is from God if it lines up with scripture. This just seems like a bunch of b.s. to me. If I'm really speaking to God in the supernatural, then I think I should see a vision or really hear him with an auditory voice. NOT have to interpret the words that are in my own mind to see if it lines up with the bible or not. Which bible should I pick? The book of Mormon? holy bible? It just doesn't make sense.
6) Along with prayer is the Christian concept of speaking in tongues. Many Christians don't believe in tongues anymore. Yet many do. Its in the bible so why shouldn't it exist if the bible is real? The bible doesn't claim these have ceased to exist. Yet that's what many people will say. If you attend a church that speaks in tongues its very interesting. As a dedicated Christian, I wanted desperately to be able to speak in tongues. I prayed many many times for this to happen to me. But it never did. I talked to many religious people about it and they said it was a gift that God would give you if he thinks you should have it. One religious friend claimed he received the gift from God. He said he just started babbling and that was all it took. So was this man really speaking another language aka tongues? Or was he just babbling nonsense. In the bible, it claims they had interpreters there to help people understand what was said. I don't see this in churches today that speak tongues. Perhaps that is why other churches don't believe in it or practice it. So how can one church believe in it and not another church? Either you're given the gift or your not from my understanding when I read the bible. Or perhaps the reality is that these are just fictional stories in the Bible and it never happened to begin with. That's why churches that don't believe in it don't want to mess with it. Because they know they don't have people with the gift to interpret tongues. Because its all made up and is fictional stories.
7) I had another interesting religious experience that goes along with the concept of speaking in tongues. At one church I visited, the people were walking up to the front of the church and the pastor would touch each person and they would miracucly fall to the floor passing out. They had someone catching the individual so they would not fall on their head. But the pastor claimed it was God touching them and they would then have a supernatural experience from this event occurring. I was a visitor that Sunday but I wanted desperately for that experience to happen to me. So I prayed to god with an open mind and walked up to the front of the church. The pastor touched me but nothing happened. He whispered in my ear for me to just fall back. So I did. But I had expected a supernatural experience to occur and it was nothing more than a load of b.s. This experience didn't cause me to step away from Christianity. But as I look back on the experience I can add it to my list of stuff that just doesn't make sense. Looking back on this event if this was a true supernatural experience I would have expected to have passed out without needing a pastor to whisper the words "just fall back" to me. I saw a similar thing on TV where they had what was called laughter of the holy spirit. The entire church was laughing in hysteria as the pastor touched them. It looked to me like the same kind of b.s.
8) There are MANY contradictions found in the bible. Just go to this site and see as many as you want: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/index.html Do you know how the bible came to be? I didn't just appear out of the sky from God. It is actually 66 books joined into one, written by many authors which claim they were divinely inspired by God. And then, a vote was taken to determine which books would make up the bible. The books that didn't make it are called the apocrypha which the Catholics believe. How do we know the men that wrote this bible were divinely inspired? Could they have been as divinely inspired as I was when I was religious?? They didn't have a bible to line up their thoughts with. So as a result they got direct revelations? It doesn't make sense that they did, and now we don't! It seems to me this could all be made up. The stories of the bible could very easily have been made up and not divinely inspired. Why not? That idea seems to be more of a reality than it being divinely inspired. Otherwise there would not be so many contradictions.
9) As we get towards the end of my list you must be wondering what is my core belief? I would call myself an agnostic. I look around me and I think its highly possible that the world and the universe were created by some higher power. The diversity of life is a big visual that is obvious. All the different animals, vegetations, people etc. I am uncertain if evolution is how we originated from. But I can accept the theory. And its possible God created and used evolution to create our world. The fact is I just don't know. That is why they call it the "theory of creation" and the "theory of evolution". They are NOT fact! But I do believe in God. I don't necessarily believe in the Christian God. But I believe in a higher power. I still pray to God and ask this higher power to reveal himself to me if it should be found in a particular religion. But I have yet to have that answered. I've finally reached the point in my life where I am finally content in what I believe. I still believe in many of the concepts of the bible. Such as thou shall not steal, lie, etc. Other concepts I may not believe in. For instance living with someone before you are married. I believe marriage is a good thing. But I believe I can love my partner in life and not have to be married to her in order to share a building together. If I'm committed in my soul to her, marriage can wait. I bring this up because many Christians think I'm living in sin because of my current roommate. I am not living in sin because I don't believe the bible is truth to begin with. But I believe I love my partner and I respect her and we can share a life together as a married couple or as a non-married couple. Sharing the same building is irrelevant.
10) If the Christian people themselves are supernaturally inspired by God, then why don't they know about my lack of faith until I bring it up. I lived for along time (in the closet) about my agnostics beliefs. Yet no one knew this. Why didn't God tell them? Even as I have now come out of the closet people don't know. The last church I attended was a very large church which I became a member of. The pastor never contacted me after I left. Probably because he has no clue that I left. Other Christian friends contacted me after I left. But the conversations always turned to, "you need to get back into church brother". It always seemed so fake. My real friends are my friends not because I'm a Christian, but because they accept me for who I am. A person shouldn't judge you because of what you believe. This has deeply hurt me. Leaving the church has only left me with memories of what I thought were friends and a good life. But the reality is they didn't care nor do they care after my deconversion. That is a big turn off. If Christianity is real and if God speaks to his children, something supernatural should have occurred and it didn't.
That is basically it! If I am to believe in something that claims to be 100% truth then it better be perfect and make complete sense. God should appear as a vision in the sky for everyone to see. I have prayed countless times for God to appear to me and really speak to me and help me find the truth. But I hear nothing when I do this. This makes me question everything. But I've come to the point in my life where I'm done questioning and trying to figure out what is truth. I believe we don't have the answers and we never will. The only thing we can do is live our lives the best we can. I try to love my neighbors as best as I can and to be there for the ones I love. If God is really found in a particular religion somewhere, I believe he will reveal it to my heart. Because it is my complete desire to be where God is. And from my conclusions, God is not found in religion. I can only hope he hears me when I talk to him in my mind every now and then.
To close, I want to share with you a quote that sums up what I believe.....
Trenton
OH
USA
Joined: 12
Left: 30
Was: Mennonite, Baptist
Now: Agnostic
Converted because: My parents raised me to believe it
De-converted because: skeptic of roots
email: cincyunixguy at yahoo dot com
My decision to become agnostic did not happen overnight. It took several years before I came to realize exactly what I believed. I grew up believing Christianity was fact so it took time for me to kill that virus that had infected my mind. I hate to be harsh for those of you who are Christian reading this. But that is what I believe Christianity is: a virus of the mind. My hope is that you will read this article and hopefully it will allow you to question what you believe. I can't imagine anyone would want to believe in something that is not true. You don't believe the moon is made of cheese? or do you? I challenge you to read this article with an open mind. Explore the questions and really stop and think about them. Why do you believe what you believe? Do you know why? I sincerely only want to be where the truth is. If someone can convince me that Christianity, or any other religion is truth, then I want to be there. But unless I have concrete evidence I can't just go on blind faith.
Let me give you a little bit of background. I grew up in a non-traditional Christian Mennonite family. You would not have known we were Mennonite based on our family lifestyle. We dressed and looked like a typical American family. I went to public school, watched most things on TV, played games, had a very fun childhood. At home we said a quick prayer before meals. In public restaurants we did not pray. I guess my parents were ashamed??? We went to church on Sunday mornings. I attended youth activities which did included bible studies as well as fun activities such as ski trips, water parks, etc. That was pretty much it. I never saw my dad read or carry a bible. My mom was more religious than he was but even she really didn't talk much about it. Religion was pretty much in the background for me growing up. On the surface we appeared to be an average American family.
In my teen years I had always assumed Christianity was truth because that's how my parents raised me. Going to church each Sunday I had assumed the stories I learned were fact. The pastors and leaders of the church presented the material as fact. My parents believed it, so why shouldn't I? I had no reason not to believe it as an early youngster learning many new things. The great thing about church was that I didn't need to pay attention all the time. It was like school that didn't have tests. So I didn't really worry or care to much about it. I enjoyed spending time with other friends at church and that was my focus.
In my early twenties I continued to assume Christianity was truth. And in my mid twenties I started to become more serious about it. I never questioned it for the simple reason that my parents had brought me up to believe it. I thought Jesus was just as historically accurate as George Washington is. I never once questioned its validity. SO I continued to attend church and became very religious during my twenties. During that time I wouldn't have considered myself religious. I was just trying to do the best I could at following what I had believed to be God's truth. I prayed to god, memorized scripture, and I was very active in the church.
I didn't question the historical accuracy of Christianity until my early thirties. One Sunday at church our pastor mentioned the fact that the Bible is not in every country in the world. He stressed that we must work hard to present the bible into every country so all could hear Gods word. Up until that point in my life I had assumed that the bible was in every country of the world. I had assumed that every person on this earth had heard about Jesus and was given the chance to accept him or reject him. If you accept it you go to heaven. If you reject it you go to hell as the bible says. But if not every person on earth is given the chance to believe as my pastor indicated, what kind of system is that? It doesn't sound right to me. Instinctively I believe God is a fair God that loves all his Children. Just as we love our own children that we as parents are responsible for. SO damning someone to hell because of life upbringings beyond their control seems absurd to me. This really influenced me to start researching the religion deeper because I was really starting to question its validity.
This started my years of skepticism (in my early 30s) of the validity of Christianity. I stepped aside and assumed everything I learned about Christianity was wrong. I pretended as though I was an alien from another planet coming to earth for the first time. From this perspective I am presented with thousands of religions. So many that it would be impossible to research all of them. Unless I wanted to devote all of my free time to this type of research. But with life as busy as it is, it would still take a lifetime to do that. I did spend a few years researching and it consumed much of my free time. I started to look into various religions to see what they had to say. Not one convinced me they had the truth. I looked into just about every Christian denomination, as well as Mormonism, Jehovah witnesses, Jain, Muslim, Hinduism, Buddhism, Wicca. I went from church to church Sunday after Sunday and I sat and observed the congregations and listened to the sermons. At the end of the sermons I'd go talk to the pastor and would usually sit down in his office to discuss religious beliefs. I had many questions... Not one Pastor could answer my questions without sounding like allot of fluff. Here are my questions and concerns I presented to pastors as well as people in the congregations:
Basically, these are ten reasons/concepts why I'm an ex-Christian...
1) Why do you believe what you believe? The majority of people will give an answer based on their bible. Or they will say its how they were raised. Why do you believe in the bible? Why do you assume your parents are correct in what they have taught you? You have to get to the root of what you believe. What makes the Bible real to you? Most Christians can't answer this other than it was passed down from generation to generation and is a very old book. So what!! Grimm's fairy tales are old. But I don't believe that to be truth. How do you know its truth? Most will say you must have faith. Or even blind faith. That is not good enough for me. I must have evidence. Especially since we are dealing with the supernatural. I should sense some kind of supernatural experience and that is simply not the case. I think people fool themselves into believing they have such an experience. But it is really only a virus of the mind affecting their thought.
2) IF the Bible has not made it into all the countries of this world, that means people are damned to hell for reasons beyond their control. That thought really troubles my mind. The bible says you must come to Jesus in order to make it into heaven. It seems very illogical that God would send millions of people to hell because they never got a chance to hear his word. How can you believe something as horrible as this? Christianity claims to be a supernatural phenomena. IF this is the case, then I think EVERYONE on this planet should have access to it. God in all his infinite powers should give EVERYONE a chance to hear his word. I shouldn't have to search hard for it. It should be as readily available as the morning sun is on a hot summer day. But that is simply not the case. I can't accept the fact that God would send innocent people like this to hell. When I talk to Christians about this concept they say we can't know what God would do in a situation like this. God may in fact save his children if they are not given the chance. However that is NOT what my bible says. The bible clearly indicates you must come to Jesus in order to be granted access to heaven.
3) We as children often follow what our parents teach us out of instinct. I grew up assuming Christianity was truth because that is how I was raised. My neighbor grew up atheist and assumed that as truth because of how she was raised. Our distant neighbors in other countries grew up believing Muslim, Hindu, etc was truth because of how they were raised. Its often difficult to convert someone to your line of thinking (no matter what it is) because of how they were raised. Do you believe in Christianity because that is how you were raised? Or did you really think about its origins and how it came to be. If Christianity is 100% truth as it claims to be, is it fair to be raised in a family that does not teach it? Which means the chances of a Hindu or Muslim converting to Christianity is slim to none. Is that fair? Not at all!!! And you can't blame the people that were raised outside of Christianity. Yet that is what happens because the bible says these people will burn in hell. It doesn't matter how good you are. If you do not come to Jesus and accept him as your savior, you will burn in hell according to the bible. So according to Christianity, my good friend that believes in the religion called Jain is going to hell. Even though he is a moral individual and believes 100% in his religion because that is what he was raised to believe.
4) Why are there so many Christian denominations? If the bible is perfect as it claims, then we should not have any mis-enterpretations. But as you know, that's why we have different denominations. Because one group interprets various scriptures differently than another. IT seems to me that if we have a perfect book as it claims to be, there should be only ONE denomination called Christianity and that's it. Or God in his magnificent power should set it right and tear down the walls of uncertainty! I can understand the Christian concept that God has given us free will, so we can make our own decisions and lead our own lives in order to accept or reject Christianity. And if this is a true concept, then I would expect the religion itself, and the people that organize and lead it to have unity. Otherwise there is much confusion about which church to attend as a new comer. What is Baptist? What is Mennonite? What is Methodist? Why not just ALL CHRISTIAN!! That would make more sense. But seeing there is so much confusion amongst the believers makes me question the validity of the religion itself. And I've discussed with many non-Christians raised atheist or agnostic and they are so confused looking at all of it they don't even want to think about attending. To them it looks as bad as a satanic church does to a Christian. A Christian wouldn't step foot into a satanic church. Neither does a non-Christian want to step foot into a Christian church. Both are appalling to the individual. Its all a matter of perspective.
5) The bible talks about the Holy Spirit which Christians pray and communicate to. Even during my religious years it always bothered me that prayer always seemed so one sided. I would pray to God, but not hear words back to me like when speaking in a normal conversation to someone. How do you hear God when you pray? Most Christians say you must quiet your mind and listen. Well sure I can do that, and I did. I would claim I heard revelations from God as a Christian. But now I know I was only fooling myself when I did that. Watch the movie "Saved" and you'll see how God can speak to you. Christians will say you can tell what your hearing is from God if it lines up with scripture. This just seems like a bunch of b.s. to me. If I'm really speaking to God in the supernatural, then I think I should see a vision or really hear him with an auditory voice. NOT have to interpret the words that are in my own mind to see if it lines up with the bible or not. Which bible should I pick? The book of Mormon? holy bible? It just doesn't make sense.
6) Along with prayer is the Christian concept of speaking in tongues. Many Christians don't believe in tongues anymore. Yet many do. Its in the bible so why shouldn't it exist if the bible is real? The bible doesn't claim these have ceased to exist. Yet that's what many people will say. If you attend a church that speaks in tongues its very interesting. As a dedicated Christian, I wanted desperately to be able to speak in tongues. I prayed many many times for this to happen to me. But it never did. I talked to many religious people about it and they said it was a gift that God would give you if he thinks you should have it. One religious friend claimed he received the gift from God. He said he just started babbling and that was all it took. So was this man really speaking another language aka tongues? Or was he just babbling nonsense. In the bible, it claims they had interpreters there to help people understand what was said. I don't see this in churches today that speak tongues. Perhaps that is why other churches don't believe in it or practice it. So how can one church believe in it and not another church? Either you're given the gift or your not from my understanding when I read the bible. Or perhaps the reality is that these are just fictional stories in the Bible and it never happened to begin with. That's why churches that don't believe in it don't want to mess with it. Because they know they don't have people with the gift to interpret tongues. Because its all made up and is fictional stories.
7) I had another interesting religious experience that goes along with the concept of speaking in tongues. At one church I visited, the people were walking up to the front of the church and the pastor would touch each person and they would miracucly fall to the floor passing out. They had someone catching the individual so they would not fall on their head. But the pastor claimed it was God touching them and they would then have a supernatural experience from this event occurring. I was a visitor that Sunday but I wanted desperately for that experience to happen to me. So I prayed to god with an open mind and walked up to the front of the church. The pastor touched me but nothing happened. He whispered in my ear for me to just fall back. So I did. But I had expected a supernatural experience to occur and it was nothing more than a load of b.s. This experience didn't cause me to step away from Christianity. But as I look back on the experience I can add it to my list of stuff that just doesn't make sense. Looking back on this event if this was a true supernatural experience I would have expected to have passed out without needing a pastor to whisper the words "just fall back" to me. I saw a similar thing on TV where they had what was called laughter of the holy spirit. The entire church was laughing in hysteria as the pastor touched them. It looked to me like the same kind of b.s.
8) There are MANY contradictions found in the bible. Just go to this site and see as many as you want: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/index.html Do you know how the bible came to be? I didn't just appear out of the sky from God. It is actually 66 books joined into one, written by many authors which claim they were divinely inspired by God. And then, a vote was taken to determine which books would make up the bible. The books that didn't make it are called the apocrypha which the Catholics believe. How do we know the men that wrote this bible were divinely inspired? Could they have been as divinely inspired as I was when I was religious?? They didn't have a bible to line up their thoughts with. So as a result they got direct revelations? It doesn't make sense that they did, and now we don't! It seems to me this could all be made up. The stories of the bible could very easily have been made up and not divinely inspired. Why not? That idea seems to be more of a reality than it being divinely inspired. Otherwise there would not be so many contradictions.
9) As we get towards the end of my list you must be wondering what is my core belief? I would call myself an agnostic. I look around me and I think its highly possible that the world and the universe were created by some higher power. The diversity of life is a big visual that is obvious. All the different animals, vegetations, people etc. I am uncertain if evolution is how we originated from. But I can accept the theory. And its possible God created and used evolution to create our world. The fact is I just don't know. That is why they call it the "theory of creation" and the "theory of evolution". They are NOT fact! But I do believe in God. I don't necessarily believe in the Christian God. But I believe in a higher power. I still pray to God and ask this higher power to reveal himself to me if it should be found in a particular religion. But I have yet to have that answered. I've finally reached the point in my life where I am finally content in what I believe. I still believe in many of the concepts of the bible. Such as thou shall not steal, lie, etc. Other concepts I may not believe in. For instance living with someone before you are married. I believe marriage is a good thing. But I believe I can love my partner in life and not have to be married to her in order to share a building together. If I'm committed in my soul to her, marriage can wait. I bring this up because many Christians think I'm living in sin because of my current roommate. I am not living in sin because I don't believe the bible is truth to begin with. But I believe I love my partner and I respect her and we can share a life together as a married couple or as a non-married couple. Sharing the same building is irrelevant.
10) If the Christian people themselves are supernaturally inspired by God, then why don't they know about my lack of faith until I bring it up. I lived for along time (in the closet) about my agnostics beliefs. Yet no one knew this. Why didn't God tell them? Even as I have now come out of the closet people don't know. The last church I attended was a very large church which I became a member of. The pastor never contacted me after I left. Probably because he has no clue that I left. Other Christian friends contacted me after I left. But the conversations always turned to, "you need to get back into church brother". It always seemed so fake. My real friends are my friends not because I'm a Christian, but because they accept me for who I am. A person shouldn't judge you because of what you believe. This has deeply hurt me. Leaving the church has only left me with memories of what I thought were friends and a good life. But the reality is they didn't care nor do they care after my deconversion. That is a big turn off. If Christianity is real and if God speaks to his children, something supernatural should have occurred and it didn't.
That is basically it! If I am to believe in something that claims to be 100% truth then it better be perfect and make complete sense. God should appear as a vision in the sky for everyone to see. I have prayed countless times for God to appear to me and really speak to me and help me find the truth. But I hear nothing when I do this. This makes me question everything. But I've come to the point in my life where I'm done questioning and trying to figure out what is truth. I believe we don't have the answers and we never will. The only thing we can do is live our lives the best we can. I try to love my neighbors as best as I can and to be there for the ones I love. If God is really found in a particular religion somewhere, I believe he will reveal it to my heart. Because it is my complete desire to be where God is. And from my conclusions, God is not found in religion. I can only hope he hears me when I talk to him in my mind every now and then.
To close, I want to share with you a quote that sums up what I believe.....
Cultivate and trust your own genius. You are
it. Everyone else's genius is just as precious.
Act accordingly. If what you are taught makes
no sense, you are beginning to learn. Be
suspicious of whatever society says you must
do. The social order is necessary, but often
not in your best interests. Follow your nose
wherever it may lead. Use your eyes, ears,
mind and heart well. They are all you have.
--- Philip Mitchel Hatfield.
1939 - 2001
Trenton
OH
USA
Joined: 12
Left: 30
Was: Mennonite, Baptist
Now: Agnostic
Converted because: My parents raised me to believe it
De-converted because: skeptic of roots
email: cincyunixguy at yahoo dot com
Comments
jesus_loves_youall@yahoo.com
2) Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Whether someone has verbally uttered the name "Jesus" to you or not, you're eternal life is in His hands. There are people across the globe who follow His ways, but have never heard His name. And when they die, He will greet them and welcome them.
3)Same as answer #2
4)God's Word is perfect. Satan has one goal: to kill, steal and destroy. He's doing a pretty good job at it by confusing so many people so much that they would go separate ways and create different denominations, or reject Jesus altogether.
5)Pick the Holy Bible. It is not necessary to have a conversation with God or some spectacular spiritual experience in order for Him to direct your daily life. 99% of the people who've ever walked the planet have not had the privilege you're expecting here. God gave you a conscience that holds you accountable. If you ignore your conscience, you're ignoring the "quiet, still voice" that is the Holy Spirit which dwells inside of you (if you ever truly accepted Jesus as your Saviour, that is...if you haven't, then you don't get the benefit of the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus sent to Earth on His behalf, when He ascended to Heaven to take His throne after having died in order to save our souls.)
6) Tongues is a spiritual gift given by the Holy Spirit and is not given to ALL Christians. Contrary to popular belief, speaking in tongues is NOT evidence that Jesus has saved your soul. It is NOT even one of the more important gifts and it does no good unless someone can understand what's being spoken. That's why other gifts, like the ability to teach, or pray, or unite people, or be a caretaker, or be a peacemaker, or have discernment are more important. The most important of all gifts is the ability to LOVE. But there are many, many gifts... Unfortunately, again, Satan has confused everyone. Imagine what would happen if you suddenly, fluently spoke to a foreign person in their native language while you were trying to tell them about Jesus? This is tongues. If no one understands and there is no one available to interpret, then something like Tongues would only cause confusion and chaos. The Holy Spirit would not allow this. So, if you've been confused by it, you've been surrounded by a bunch of fakes wanting to glorify themselves instead of God. Please don't allow them to steal your relationship with God away from you.
7) Again, you've been surrounded by fakes. They love the attention they get and how important they feel when they can convince a room of people that they're special enough for the Holy Spirit to knock them down. Don't think for one second you weren't in a room full of spirits. Just be grateful you weren't desperate enough to play with them. This is the Devil when he shows some of his true colors. The very fact that you discerned that something's amiss shows me that you may be closer to God than you think.
8) I would challenge you to read "Our Bible, How We Got It, by Charles Leach" Halley's Bible Handguide is another wonderful guidebook. The Bible is a lovestory about the relationship between God and His creation that He created in His image. Of course He would choose Man to tell this story, and the story of the Bible took 4,000 years to write because it was a 4,000 year journey. If you read it though, you cannot deny the incredible mind of God at work in every single word. It required many people to write it, but it is the same mind on every page. Don't be so quick to bet your money on what the naysayers write and say. They are liars to the core.
9) We all have our own idea of what's acceptable and what isn't. With us, everything has an exception. With God, everything is absolute. You can choose to follow what feels good to you even if it differs from what God says. That's the beauty of free choice and we all do it. Loving your girlfriend isn't the sin. Having sex outside of marriage is the sin. It doesn't mean you're going to hell. It just means that you've strayed in this area of your life. It feels better for me to drive 80 down the interstate instead of 55, but I'm breaking the law, and truthfully, I'd probably be better off if I just obeyed it. But that's my choice. Maybe there'll be consequences for my choice...maybe not.
10)Christians are not supernaturals. We're human and we're flawed. I'm sorry you've had some horrible experiences in your walk...you've put your trust in people who've misled and betrayed you. Please don't confuse human ability with God's ability. Again, this is a personal relationship between you and Him. You're on Earth. Earth is not a supernatural place, so if you're waiting for a supernatural occurrence to happen here so that you will be able to believe in God, you will be disappointed. This is the test. It revolves around faith. Once you grasp this concept, everything will come together for you. You will have eternity for the supernatural. Right now, you have a window in time to make a choice about how you want to spend eternity.
And you're right about one thing: God is not found in religion. But He did create you and He does love you. Remember this story: Satan taunted God over Job, telling Him that Job would never love, worship or walk with Him if He didn't constantly shower Job with blessings and give him a wonderful life. God made a bet with Satan that Job would still love Him even if he lost everything. I would make a bet with you that Satan has told God that mankind would never love, worship, or walk with Him unless He showed himself to us in all His glory. We will one day see our Saviour in all His radiant glory. But that's our reward for overcoming the trials of this life and having FAITH in what we cannot see. It is not a condition for us to believe.
Who the hell cares what the bible says? Point is, how can you prove the bible's trustworthiness without giving me the same reasons I might use in defense of a phone book?? C'mon! Dare ya! Prove the bible is the word of god!! -Wes.
Cheesus Chrust says, "Eat. Laugh. Share". Good words to live by and no one dies!
I think your comments show great thought and intellectual struggle. I agree with you - however, I do believe in Jesus by all the references to him in many, many old texts not just he Bible. (Why do people worship the Bible?) He did change the world - and ALL will be saved. He came to save us ALL - whether or not we have this Christian "born-again" experience. It is not up to us, it never was. Press on and know you are not alone...
By that comment I can say with virtual certainty that you've never actually looked into what those "many many old texts" are, or what they say. Why don't you take some time to do that. I think you'll find it to be quite interesting.
Best wishes.
1) roughly how many ancient documents mention Jesus (e.g. 1, 5, 20, 100?)
2) roughly how detailed they are (e.g. they mention "Jesus of Nazareth", or the resurrection, etc.)
3) roughly when they were written (e.g. during the life of Jesus, a few years after, etc.)
Honestly, I don't mean to pick on you. I am simply interested in your opinion as it stands right now. Are you game?
You are correct that I haven't actually read those texts myself, just read of them in class. Does that count?
jesus_loves_youall@yahoo.com
Ooo. Him got email. Him got "strange version" of Christianity. Him want tell you bout it. Matthew? Shout out......have powwow. Him waiting. Please Great Spirit in sky.
But wait! wait!..... white man Christian said: He(Jesus) did change the world - and ALL will be saved. He came to save us ALL - whether or not we have this Christian "born-again" experience. It is not up to us, it never was. Press on and know you are not alone...[bold added]
Yikes!...seems this "True Christian" has a "strange version" of Christianity too! Yoo, hoo?...Matthew? lol
Thanks for the reply. (By the way, would you mind picking a screen name other than "Anonymous"--it gets very confusing when every other poster is called "Anonymous". Thanks.)
You said you were game, "sort of", but then you didn't address my question about estimating the number of documents at all. Do you not wish to even hazard a guess based on what you recall from your history class? You asked if reading "of" the ancient books [that mention Jesus] rather than reading the books themselves counts for anything. Sure. For example, I would think it should give you some very rough idea of how many there are, and what kinds of things they contain, even if you can't remember the authors or when they were written. Is that an unrealistic expectation on my part?
You want on to say "It was very interesting that the pivot point of history was the life of Jesus. How could one man (with no wealth or 'power') be so influential?"
Rather than answer that directly, let me start by posing a similar question to you. How is it that Osiris and Isis exerted such a tremendous influence over the cultures of the Middle East for thousands of years? We all know now that they didn't even exist, right? So why were opulent temples built for them, and why did they inspire such a panoply of marvelous artwork, and why were all pharos assumed to derive their powers from Osiris, etc. All of that, and more, for literally thousands of years. And neither Osiris nor his wife Isis even existed. How could that be?
So as to not leave your question dangling, let me say that "beliefs" are very powerful things. They have been enormous levers, moving entire cultures for millennia. Yet nothing could be more starkly evident than the fact that a belief need not be true in order for it be exert influence; even society-shaping influence. Man has worshiped innumerable gods, and societies have been completely shaped by those beliefs; yet you and I can both agree that Osiris, Isis, Mithra, Attis, Adonis, Krishna, etc. were all fictional. I just go one step further than you; I include Yahweh/Jesus in that list as well.
By the way, if you were to study history in China or India, do you suppose that they too would point to Jesus as being "pivot point of history"? Is it likely that they are biased while we are objective?
I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and I believe him and the bible, because it was my choice.
Romans 10: 9-10
(King James Version)
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
I accept the consequences of my decision.
No one has the right to judge you, only God.
You be true to you.
Yes, yes, Anony'...thank you for pointlessly stating the obvious.... however, you've got it completely backwards---it was our "decision" to NOT accept Jesus, and to NOT believe the bible, hence, EX-christian. Yoo hoo?.. hello?
Anony' continues: I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and I believe him and the bible, because it was my choice.
Hey, good for you! Everyone's free to believe what they wish, right?---the bigfoot tracker believes in community gorillas; the UFOlogist believes in Martians; the Scientologist believes in lizard-men..and those silly Muslims believe in a creator God and His Son, Muhammad.
Of course, none of these "beliefs" says ANYTHING about reality, do they?
Anony': Romans 10: 9-10
(King James Version)[insert scripture]
"You'd better not shout,
You'd better not cry,
You'd better not pout,
I'm tellin' you why,
Santa Claus is com-ing to town!" (Santa Claus is Coming to Town: verse 1)
Anony': I accept the consequences of my decision.
The consequences? Oh, you must mean going to Islamic Hell for denying the one "True God", Allah? Yeah, I hear it's really HOT there. ~ Sssssss.
Anony' No one has the right to judge you, only God.
In that case, I hope Allah, the one True God, will take into consideration that you've been a decent human being, in the case that you should deny his existence. After all, isn't that what any "just" deity would do?????