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Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
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Author | Topic: People - I /was/ a Christian | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
For Faith and Belief, I guess, since Short Subjects is closed. Or for nowhere, I don't even know if there's anything here to discuss.
In another thread, a not-so-evolved white guy pretends like he knows me:
quote: People - I was a Christian. A fundamentalist, creationist one. Biblical inerrancy. Redeeming power of Jesus. Gave my life to Christ. All that stuff. I've been there, people. I do know, truly, what you speak of, White Guy. I was all wrapped up in it - which is how I know that it's fake and you're fooling yourself.
Friend I would be glad to believe that life is meaningless and there won't be a judgment again. See, that's nonsense. There's no solace in an uncaring universe. In the senseless deaths of the loved and the innocent. This isn't a good time we're having here on Earth, White Guy. Maybe you need to get out more but there's sucky stuff going on. My close friend died in a meaningless war. My wife's grandfather died from the strain of caring for a woman who had forgotten him six hours after the funeral. Sure, there's joy, too. The joy we make for ourselves. The universe does precious little to make that possible and plenty to make that impossible for some. As atheists, we would desperately love the idea of an inescapable cosmic force that punished the wicked and preserved those we love that we might be with them again. Jesus, it's not like religion makes all that money by telling people what they don't want to hear. What they don't want to hear is atheism, I know, because as an atheist people are always trying to shut me up.
But knowing that justice will eventually prevail is a wonderful thought. Oh, so you do want it to be true. My point exactly. Sure, maybe it means you have a few cosmic parking tickets to pay, but like most reasonable people, you think accepting the just punishments for your small infractions is worth catching and punishing the guys that rape and murder children, for instance.
We can move mountains, lift cars, walk on water, heal others, levitate, do all of these things. Are you shitting me? Nobody can levitate on faith, or heal with faith, or excavate with faith. Faith is useless. The people that "levitate" are called "pilots", and they fly airplanes, which were invented out of scientific skepticism - the opposite of faith. The people that heal are called "doctors", and they use "medicines", which were invented out of scientific skepticism - the opposite of faith. The people that excavate are diggers, and they dig with machines - machines invented when people got tired of waiting around for God to move the mountains for them. Faith cannot move anything. Faith cannot do anything. Faith is worse than useless; faith is what convinces people to wait around for others to do it for them. I know this because I had faith. I was full of it. And it was useless. It was only when I eliminated faith that I began to make anything of myself. They say "God is my co-pilot" but it was only when I took the wheel myself that I ever got anywhere. So don't try to act like I don't know anything about your faith. I believed it long before you did. Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.
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AdminCoragyps Inactive Member |
Promoted.
And the non-mod me thinks, "nicely written!!"
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AdminCoragyps Inactive Member |
Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1372 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
People - I was a Christian. A fundamentalist, creationist one. Biblical inerrancy. Redeeming power of Jesus. what, exactly, caused your change in opinion? if you don't mind me asking? Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
People - I was a Christian. A fundamentalist, creationist one. Biblical inerrancy. Redeeming power of Jesus. Gave my life to Christ. Me, too. I was a born again (yes, I did have that personal salvation experience where I asked Jesus to save me and come into my heart, etc.) evangelical, Biblical literalist Christian. I will also add that becoming a non-Christian was really a hard thing to do. It had nothing to do with being "prideful in my own intellect" or "wanting to live in my sinful desires". I fought against the loss of my faith. I did not choose to stop believing. I wanted to remain a believer. But I finally had to admit that the Bible is not inerrant or divinely inspired, and, in fact, is contradictory and factually inaccurate, and that I do not even believe that God exists. So I, too, find born again Christians a bit too smug when they talk about how they and others used to be atheists or evolutionists or whatever until they came to a saving knowledge of Christ, as all atheists were deluded and needed to have the facts explained carefully to them. Some of us were deluded Christians until we understood the facts properly, and became non-evangelical Christians or even atheists. I could tell you what I've read about evolution, the big-bang, super-universes, quantum foam, and all that stuff. Eventually you'd ask a question I can't answer, then I'd have to go look it up. Even If I had the time for that shit, in the end you'd ask a question science hasn't answered yet. So let's save time and skip ahead to "I don't know." -- jhuger
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
If it hadn't been off-topic, I was going to respond to this myself:
quote: As we grow up, we realize that that "high" is easy enough to come by. There are a thousand things that produce that same "born again" feeling, from watching our children grow to learning something new for ourselves to simple things like a new flavour of ice cream. The feeling is a chemical reaction in the brain. It's the height of arrogance to pretend that we have feelings or "understanding" that others don't have. And that feeling is fleeting. In the long term, it's far more satisfying to do something about the ills of the world instead of waiting for some Flying Spook to do it for you. “Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels ------------- Help scientific research in your spare time. No cost. No obligation. Join the World Community Grid with Team EvC
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Lithodid-Man Member (Idle past 2959 days) Posts: 504 From: Juneau, Alaska, USA Joined: |
Like you and Crash, I too was a full on born-again evangelical. When I realized how wrong I was it was also not some choice I made as an excuse to be sinful. It was a tragedy, and one I didn't see how I could overcome at the time. Even afterwards I continued to pray begging to be shown to be wrong. This is why I resent HEWG's (and others) suggestions otherwise. Unfortunately the message will undoubtedly fall on deaf ears. In my discussions with others on this the grand conclusion was that my experience and theirs were not the same. That is ultimately they are 'true Christians' and I never was. I think it is analogous to trying to explain to a teenager that their first breakup will eventually be unimportant to them!
"I have seen so far because I have stood on the bloated corpses of my competitors" - Dr Burgess Bowder
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jar Member (Idle past 423 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
I think I've asked you before but I'd love to hear from all of you.
If you had been brought up in a religious environment that encouraged questioning any and all facets of faith, and one where the leaders had not tried to insist that obvious falsehoods like the Flood or Garden of Eden or the Exodus myth or the Tyre prophecy were fact, would it have made a difference? Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
I grew up in Southeast Alaska, and as a result I know a little bit about the myths of the indigenous peoples. (I still love totem poles, by the way.) They were fairly typical for an animistic people. Spirits inhabited everything, the land was full of spirits.
Well, I don't know how familiar anyone is with the local landscape. Mountains come straight out of the water, so the landscape is heavily wooded and steep; rainy, low grey clouds, and patches of mist lying among the trees in the hillsides. On two seperate occassions many years apart, as I was admiring this scenery, I felt the Spirits. No shit! The feeling was very strong. Easily as strong as anything I felt as a Christian. And remember, I am an atheist -- I did not and do not believe in spirits. Yet, despite that I felt it very strongly. (By the way, I still sometimes express my homesickness as "the gods here don't know me.") On another occassion I was meditating on Lao Tzu (my preferred source for spiritual wisdom), and again I felt this intense feeling, as if I were about to pierce the veil of Maya. Again, I was and am an atheist, yet the feeling was so strong that the high lasted through the next day. Interesting thing about those religious highs. Even an atheist like me, who does not believe this literally, can experience them. (And so I can kind of understand the attraction that ecstactic religion has for some people.) I could tell you what I've read about evolution, the big-bang, super-universes, quantum foam, and all that stuff. Eventually you'd ask a question I can't answer, then I'd have to go look it up. Even If I had the time for that shit, in the end you'd ask a question science hasn't answered yet. So let's save time and skip ahead to "I don't know." -- jhuger
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
If you had been brought up in a religious environment that encouraged questioning any and all facets of faith...would it have made a difference? I don't know. I'm so used to who I am now that I feel that this was going to be inevitable. Probably not, but it's how I feel since I can't imagine now being any other way. But I'm sure that my transition to an atheist would have been more gradual, less traumatic, and the Bible would be on my night table as my preferred source of spiritual wisdom rather than the Tao Te Ching. I might also still be going to Church if I were able to find one that welcomes atheists. (Maybe a Episcopal one?) I could tell you what I've read about evolution, the big-bang, super-universes, quantum foam, and all that stuff. Eventually you'd ask a question I can't answer, then I'd have to go look it up. Even If I had the time for that shit, in the end you'd ask a question science hasn't answered yet. So let's save time and skip ahead to "I don't know." -- jhuger
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jar Member (Idle past 423 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Thank you for responding.
Don't knock the Tao Te Ching though. I still read it often and I used to use it in some of my Sunday School classes for kids middle school age and above. Please don't think I have any problem with someone becoming or being an atheist.
I might also still be going to Church if I were able to find one that welcomes atheists. (Maybe a Episcopal one?) Well, as in all sects, there are many Episcopalians that would welcome atheists and not really much care if you were a believer of not, but we also have our share of folk that can be as exclusive as in any other sect. I'm glad you are comfortable where you are and I'm sorry the transition was traumatic. Edited by jar, : appalin spallin Edited by AdminPhat, : fixing glitch...hopefully Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 8.3 |
Yup, me too.
Born agan christian in my teen years, Atheist by twenty. Although I was never a Creationist.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2506 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
jar writes: If you had been brought up in a religious environment that encouraged questioning any and all facets of faith, and one where the leaders had not tried to insist that obvious falsehoods like the Flood or Garden of Eden or the Exodus myth or the Tyre prophecy were fact, would it have made a difference? In my case, no. I grew up with non-literalist Christianity, and left it. I see your point, as there's actually nothing in scientific knowledge that really cuts directly across the beliefs of my childhood, but reason and general knowledge are a problem for all religions, and I think that the concept of religious faith is the enemy of reason and any serious search for truth. If all Christians were brought up in an environment that "encouraged questioning of any and all facets of faith", as you put it, Christianity would not last very long as a widespread belief. The same goes for other religions. They rely on indoctrinating children to perpetuate themselves. That's why, fairly obviously, we can accurately predict that the majority of children growing up in the U.S. now will consider themselves Christians when they're 21 years old, the majority in India, Hindus, and the majority in Egypt, Muslims, etc. I don't think Christianity can perpetuate itself for too long in the west either by being literal or liberal. It's doomed either way.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: While I wasn't encouraged to question faith, really, I was raised a Catholic, so was not taught that any of that stuff was literally true, but were mythical stories and/or metaphor. It didn't make a difference that the Catholic church had no problem with science. There were plenty enough strange, irrational, and damaging ideas to reject even without the literalism. I think the only church I might have continued to attend if I had been raised in it would have been Unitarian Universalist.
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mike the wiz Member Posts: 4755 From: u.k Joined: |
One thing that does bore me is the belief some people seem to have, that if you were a Christian and are now an atheist, then you now have the ultimate truth. Like it's some sort of proof that God doesn't exist. Man, that's so painfully obtuse, it's hard to watch.
Yawn. ...That's fine for you, but for others it's not the case and your arguments are not enough to convince them you are right because there seem to be holes in them you either don't recognise through some sort of denial, or you just seem to ignore no matter how many times they are presented to you.
Nator writes: While I wasn't encouraged to question faith, really, I was raised a Catholic What faith? Let's not pretend you had any, so that you can join in the "we've been there done that" T-shirt parade.
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