Confession of a former christian

dwise1 writes:

quote:

---

One chapter of the textbook covered moral reasoning. Moral reasoning is eventually to reach the stage where the person considers the consequences of one's actions.

---

I'm reminded of those motivational speakers who talk about how they can "defuse any altercation." They get a person up on stage and challenge them to take up a defiant position while they then use their "techniques" and almost invariably, the person folds in a couple seconds.And I am always incredulous: What could make them be so incapable of sticking up for themselves? The "technique" is always, when it is boiled down, a form of bullying. The language is always pleasant, but it always comes down to the "defuser" assuming the air of the most rational person in the world while simultaneously insinuating that the other person is irrational. Since nobody wants to be irrational, they quickly acquiesce.On a couple of occasions, I have been fortunate enough to be allowed to make public my analysis: "But you just folded like a cheap suit!" The presenter then lets me be the one and when I hold my ground, we see that these "techniques" simply do not work upon anybody who has an ounce of self-esteem and can make his own case. The presenter, then, starts making excuses, "Some situations cannot be resolved." Well, that may be true (some people never seem to be happy unless they're miserable), but the problem was not that the situation couldn't be resolved but rather that the "presenter" was simply attempting to manipulate his interlocutor, not actually reach an agreement.I learned this lesson very early. In junior high school, I had trouble with a bully. Eventually, I finally fought back (kicking his ass in the process) which, of course, was the precise moment when the vice-principal happened to have been paying attention. So, of course, I'm the one hauled into the office with my parents. I explain what has been going on, filling in all the details about what led up to the altercation that the VP had not seen and all the previous instances that he didn't know about. The VP accepts this (the other student was known to be a bully), but he still wants to impose punishment upon me. I point out to the VP that it is unacceptable for me to just sit there and take it, that my continued complaints to the teachers had resulted in absolutely no change, I am owed an education without harrassment and while I understand the problems of fighting, I am not going to be ashamed because the school officials fell down on the job.The VP, seeing that he is not able to cow me, then tries to play the insult card by saying that I need to "calm down" and "stop being so emotional." I point out to him that I have not raised my voice, that I have simply pointed out the facts, including the fact that the solution he is suggesting has proven to be completely unworthy, and that a different course needs to be taken.He then tries to play the patronizing card by asking, "And what would you have me do?" He expects a 12-year-old to be incapable of responding to this: After all, he is the reasonable one and I am the unreasonable one. But, I don't fold: "Suspend him. If that doesn't solve it, expel him." This floors him: "I can't do that." I have one of my "(*blink!*)" moments and respond, "Of course you can. You're the vice-principal. It is your job to maintain good order and discipline in the school, is it not? If you have a student whom you know is causing trouble, why is it that I have to suffer at his hands simply because you are unwilling to take action?"At that point, he could no longer deal with me. He turned to my parents and simply declaimed his solution: I would be removed from my classes with the bully.This is precisely the attitude you are describing: Morality comes from authority and questioning that authority through the requesting of justification is not to be tolerated, especially when it becomes clear that the justification is bogus.Note, this doesn't necessarily lead to atheism. It simply means that dogmatically authoritarian forms of theism can be difficult to swallow for those who have managed to learn how to stick up for themselves. It doesn't surprise me that a person who comes to this conclusion but has nothing but dogmatic theism around him, would seek to find his own way without god. But, others may think that the problem is not the concept of god but rather the humans who claim to speak for god.

---

Rrhain

---

Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Free for all? Not that I consider pointing out the weaknesses in a particular part of your case preaching. Anymore than I would consider your own post atheistic-preaching. We are both rationalising our stance.Now if you (or anyone else) could present an argument as to how God is acting unrighteously in turning off something he promised to turn off - or modifying the condition of something he owns anyway (I'm talking about our physical life here) - then I'm all ears. In another thread is fine by me.- Something has to define what good is. Your own definition revolves around you being your own Authority. You subject yourself to whoever/whatever system of morality you chose to. And rebel against what you chose to rebel against. Me? Well, I was my own Authority too. Somewhere along the line I authorised myself to go Gods way - knowing that that choice was irrevocable. I wouldn't look down on your choice (although I might find elements of your system as repugnant as you do mine). That much is God-given us both.As pointed out above, things become problematic when you try to subject God to the law he subjected men to. Take the law forbidding stealing for example: how could God steal - given that he owns everything?? Beats me!- Assume for a moment that I am correct. IF you were to consider everyones death as the point at which they are moved to their final, eternal destination AND you assumed that everyone was given an equal chance w.r.t their opportunity to access a "positive (rather than negative) afterlife outcome" THEN why would you consider God in such a negative light regarding his moving people to eternal destinations?If a central point of this blink-of-an-eye existance on earth is to sort out eternal destinations then why the objection to people going to eternal destinations. Aren't you being a bit earthly minded?- I know this is why you don't believe. Next to believing in some false god it must be the main reason why unbelievers unbelieve.It's a common thing to hear people talk about leaving Christian faith - when they never had Christian faith. What they had is what they were told and once they reached the age/circumstance whereby they could assess the evidence in their possession they realise all they had is what they were told. God quickly goes the way of Santa Claus. And so he should. Such a faith is a blind faith and on it's own is useless.You won't believe in God until God demonstrates his existance to you in no uncertain terms. They are your terms and (happily) they frequently happen to be Gods terms too. Grant that there is no need for God to provide classical empirical evidence of his existance - suppose instead that he would have no problem reconforming the arrangement of your mind so as to render you 100% convinced of his existance. To demand God jump through your hoops - when it must be accepted that God can prove-it-otherwise-and-to-your-satisfaction AND is entitled to do it his way ... is displaying the heart of the hellbound.It is worth noting that he provides this evidence of his existance after you are saved so there is no need to raise the "I can't believe until I have evidence" objection. You are not expected to believe in Gods existance without evidence that satisfies. This God you hate so much is nothing if not reasonable.- It doesn't really work that way. There is only one person who can prove it and that's God. In the meantime what you get exposed to are aspects of the gospel. There are snippets of it throughout this post for example. Consider it as a sort of subliminal advertising The gospel delivered via the Trojan Horse of debate.

quote:

---

Romans 1:16 ..the gospel..is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes

---

...not any argument of mine.

Taking it apart a little. Those at Nurnberg were rendered subject (by defeat) to the laws/argument/morality of the victor. If no victory then no court. If no court then no attempt at this defence and no possible defeat of it. Before you can apply your comparison you must find away to get the Israelites to the dock (so to speak). To simply suppose they must be placed there because you don't like the killing of men, women and children isn't reason enough. According to that reasoning we would have to suppose Allied troops standing in the dock at Nurnberg!The Nurnberg picture resonates chillingly with what is promised by God. God will be the final victor and all those who died fighting on his enemies side will be raised so as to stand at his Judgement. They all will be subject to his law/argument/morality and their defence ("I was only following his orders" and "I was under his influence") will be defeated.There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth come the verdict.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Perhaps if you were to come to God in the name of his son Jesus, humbly and contrite for your own sins like all must do who hope to get the ear of the supreme majesty of the Universe for yourself, you'd forget what other people do and focus on your own need and relationship with God as per the teachings of Jesus and the disciples of him who were model examples of true believers.Distress times aren't all that God is for. Draw near to him at all times and he responds by coming to you and manifesting himself to you wonderfully. Then in distress times he's there when you need him.The fear of God, understanding that he is the supreme majesty of the Universe, is the beginning of wisdom. I pray for you and others here from time to time as God brings you to mind.Go with God; the Biblical god, Jehovah, that is.

---

BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

I think that's a great short clip (under 5 min?) that puts a lot of religious bias and dogma into perspective. I didn't relate to all of the things he talked about, but definitely to some. I really liked how he would talk about something that seemed normal and acceptable to him as a christian, contrast it with something found very abnormal and strange to all of modern society, then immediately identify just how similar the two ideas really are.I was raised a Catholic, and spent a lot of my youth also attending a Southern Baptist church. The Pastor of the Baptist church was a neighbour, and he had 3 boys who were my age and we were all good friends.When I was 10 or so, I immediately picked up on the differences between the Catholic church I went to and the Baptist church I also visited. Although the implications of those differences just went right over my head. None of the ideas were all that important to me, nor did I really care one way or the other who believed what or who used what method to show their belief each week.When I was older, the existance of two such differing methods was implanted in my brain. I soon realized that they weren't even the only two, there were millions. And not a single one with any better connection to reality than any other. That's when I became a follower of reality. I thought about joining a certain religion, or maybe a few even. For their benefits do exist... a community, friends, people to talk to. But I soon realized that I couldn't do such a thing and be true to myself. It felt like I was lying to myself, and I couldn't honestly continue following other people when I knew they had no better ideas then I did. Actually, that wasn't the problem. The problem is that they wouldn't accept that they had no better ideas, they truly believed their baseless ideas were better. I couldn't bring myself to do that. I require a foundation connected to reality to base my values on if I'm going to tell someone my values are better.I also realized that the benefits that exist within religion are not only available from religion. I can have friends outside of church. I can have people to talk to without ignoring reality. I can even talk to an imaginary all-powerful being at any time without the need for religion.I learned to lean on ideals themselves instead of charicatures that embodied those ideals. I learned that having a relationship with something that represents infinite power-wisdom-caring-justice-whatever isn't as good as understanding those real ideals and how to gain power-support-anything from them directly.I learned to accept when reality showed me to be wrong. I learned how to learn from these mistakes, and how the process makes me a better person. I now almost hope to be shown wrong, because I understand that this is how real growth and understanding occurs. The self-confidence and mental-health provided from having the ability to welcome failure is a phenomenon I have never felt reproduced anywhere else in my life. It is so freeing, invigorating and powerful that it blows my expectations away everytime it happens again.I do still have faith. But only in things that seem to lend themselves to faith. Like love and hope. I believe in the real God. The one that either actually exists, or does not. The one God that is either all powerful, or is not. The one God that either has an intense desire to be a part of our lives, or does not. The one God who wants to throw millions of people into the firey pits of Hell, or does not. I believe in the real God. And as soon as that God lets me know Him, then I will know Him. Until then, reality is what is here, and it is reality that will guide me to truth.

If a man promises to kill another man, and then kills him, is he acting "righteously" by following through with his promise? If not, why not?If I own a puppy, and drown it because my son refuses to do a chore, am I justified in drowning the puppy because I owned it? If not, why not?You give your deity a literal free pass. Any act he does is considered "good" with no rational thought involved whatsoever. He could submit a person to the worst tortures imaginable for all eternity for no reason whatsoever, and you would still define his actions as "good" becaue you define "good" by what your deity says.People like you scare me. If you heard a voice one day and believed it to be God, and that voice told you to blow up a shopping mall, you'd do it, and think you were doing the right thing.So, just to cover out bases here:If I kill a baby, that's evil. If God kills a baby, or if I kill a baby on God's command, it's not evil.Meaning you ascribe to a moral relativism even less objective than most. Human empathy and reason seem to be sufficient. But I do look down on your choice. I respect your right to believe whatever you wish, iano, but I have no respect for your actual beliefs, or for your moral system. The mere fact that when questioning moral judgment, you use legal definitions rather than any sort of rational argument over the ethics of those laws demonstrates that something's not quite right here.You accept as unlimited authority an entity you can't even prove exists. You can't even provide objective evidence suggesting it might exist. I may as well assign Superman as my source of "authority." After all, there are books featuring him as well, and some of them feature real places. Clearly, Superman must be real as well. This assumes that God does own everything. Hard to own things when you don't exist.Even if he did exist, let's go through a brief thought exercise:If I create the world's first Artificial Intelligence, what would be an ethical way to treat the new being? Assume that the AI has the full range of thought and emotion of a human being. Technically, I own it, becasue I created it, correct? Would it be ethical for me to subject it to torture on a whim? To "kill" it by erasing its programming for no reason?Technically, I'm the "final Authority" on its existence, becasue I created it, right? I should be able to do whatever I want to it, make whatever rules for its existence I decide, and feel free to take away the artificial life I gave it at any time. Right?I'd find such things to be morally repugnant, even if legally correct. Laws often do not reflect a reasonable system of ethics - that's why we've had to repeal such disgusting laws as those that made slavery legal. Death involves a great deal more than simply "moving to a destination." You could take the same stance with a murderer - all he's doing is moving people to their "final destinations," so what's the problem? And who cares if he does it in horrible ways, or to children?And what about one of those "Afterlife outcomes" being Hell? Eternal torture in a lake of fire? How disgusting!To paraphrase a signature line from another board,"Hitler burned Anne Frank once, and for this we call him evil. God burned Anne Frank forever, and for this theists call him 'good.'" Your position trivializes death. While I understand that your basic premise is that this life is relatively meaningless, I strongly disagree with that assertion. Even if you were correct and this life served no further purpose than to determine the destination fo a "soul," it would still be morally repugnant to take away the life of a sentient being on a whim, or to torture that being for eternity based on a finite lifetime of "sins." Ah, the well-worn "No True Scotsman" fallacy. If I turned away from Christianity, well, I must never have been a real Christian in the first place!I had faith at one point, iano. I beleived with my whole heart, and thought I could honestly feel "God's" presence in my life, filling my spirit. I was certain of God's existence, had accepted Jesus as my personal savior, etc etc. I most certainly did have "Christian faith," by any way a rational observer could determine it.I only lost that faith when I examined my reasons for having it. All of those feelings were nothing more than vague emotional self-delusions. I had no objective evidence, meaning I was basically trusting to tradition and subjective personal experiences with nothing objective to back it up. Once I determined that faith in God was objectively identical to a belief in an imaginary friend, belief in Santa Claus, or even a psychotic delusion, I determined that I could no longer accept tradition and subjective emotional "feelings" as reasons for believing in anything. It wouldn't take much. The fact that he has chosen not to demonstrate his existence in any meaningful way speaks volumes. The silence is deafening. Sure he could. But a belief on my part that such a thing has happened, and taking that belief to be "proof" that God exists (literally taking others' belief in God to be evidence that God exists) would not lony be circular reasoning, it would be identical to believing that the voices a schitzophrenic hears are real. Threats of an imaginary eternal torture chamber do nothing, iano. It makes me beleive you less. Reasonable? Doesn't sound very reasonable to me. Requiring people to set aside rational thought, depending entirely on subjective, unprovable, unsupportable positions upon which to base belief, and the threat of eternal punishment for a very finite period of disbelief, does not sound like anything approaching reason to me, iano. Then again, the fact that he has not demonstrated his existence, and in fact seems to have specifically covered it up becasue the Bible contradicts reality to such a degree, means that either your God is incompetant, a cruel trickster like Loki, or simply nonexistent. I'm a big fan of parsimony, so I pick "nonexistent." You mean like the parts that say the whole world was flooded, when it very obviously never was? The brainwashing techniques of Christianity are the reason I was a believer for over 20 years, and I know them well. Your silly quotes from your collection of edited old books don't work any more, iano. I don't accept the Bible as having any sort of authority, any more than the Illiad or the Koran or any other old text regarding the supernatural. Unless and until you provide objective evidence to support your beliefs, you may as well be talking to yourself.

There should never be any need for proselytizing on behalf of this mind arranging God, then. It's interesting that the Christian God chose never to perform any mind arranging on the peoples of the Americas until he was brought there by the Europeans around 500 years ago, yet he had been busy mind arranging in Ireland for about a 1000 years before that.To thinking people, this would illustrate the obvious; that religions are cultural phenomena spread from human to human, with no supernatural mind arranging involved.When individuals feel the presence of a God, the adults' imaginary friend, in their heads, they are in fact the only believer in that particular God. The God is usually based on a specific interpretation of one of the religions, but the final form of the imaginary friend is unique to the individual. This can easily be illustrated by questioning individuals of the same sect of the same religion about their Gods, and noting the variation in the characters of the Gods.We can often see it quite clearly on EvC. The more detail that individual theists give about their Gods, the easier it is to see that these are unique subjective creations within cultural frameworks.There's only one person in the world who believes in the iano God, iano, and there only ever will be one. That God will die with his creator.

Everything you have said regarding God's right to take the lives he supposedly blessed us with, has and is being used by Islamic extremists to justify killing innocent people in acts of terrorism. God wills it.Do they believe any less than you? Given that that they are willing to kill themselves along with their victims in many cases I would suggest that if anything they believe even more strongly than you do.Are they wrong and you right? If so why?

The discussion assumes God exists for the sake of argument in order that his action can be explained in the light of what his existance means. Or be attacked as the action of a psychotic madman. In assuming Gods existance Allahs non-existance is also assumed. They are wrong because Allah is a figment of satans imagination. That is my belief at least. For an absolute objective answer I believe we all only have to hang around for a few score years.- The currency of zeal and the currency of belief might not be as miscible as first appears. Islam is a religion of works and if I had the same level of belief in Islam as I currently have for Christianity it wouldn't be at all surprising to find me worrying about the distinct possibility of a negative afterlife outcome. I'm a sinner you see.But if someone were to open up a way whereby a positive afterlife outcome was assured simply by carrying out an act such as you describe - then I could very well imagine myself leaping at the chance. What's a few score years here when certain bliss can be had by 'sacrificing' it? What use a few score years when my sin could well lead to me blowing it and spending some or other time in purifying or permanent Hell?Edited by iano, : No reason given.

This thinking person looks to Abraham who believed God and was declared righteous. Abraham never heard of Christ yet is saved in Christ. Which only goes to show that a person doesn't need to have heard of Christ in order to be saved in Christ. It wouldn't be pushing the boat out too much further to suppose that a person need not have heard of the biblical God either - in order to be saved by the biblical God. I'm sure you'll observe much the same thing if examining 10 descriptions of your wife written by 10 different people. Or read 10 witness accounts of the same car crash. Is the person being described different or are the people doing the describing different.I know which answer I'd give.

The most famous of these experiments is the Milgram experiment.

---

I'm trying to see things your way, but I can't put my head that far up my ass.

Buzsaw, has it ever occurred to you that the best way for you to bring me back to god is to demonstrate how good it would be rather than just giving me just another sermon that has next to no real meaning? What you just wrote is called (at least by me anyway) fortune cookie language.

---

I'm trying to see things your way, but I can't put my head that far up my ass.

Bimbo!!!
(I had one CO, a software consultant and conservative Christian, who had no inkling at all of that software cultural reference (the Hindi software geek in Short Circuit) and responded to me with "What did you just call me?" Also, after a consulting stint in New England, he kept going on and on about how many National Public Radio stations there were in New England and I kept thinking how totally cool that was, until I finally realized that he was complaining about it.)That is precisely the study I was referring to.

Will all the people with an imaginary Christian God in their heads agree with you that Abraham's God and Christ are not one and the same? Do all Christians agree with you on this? You'll get different accounts from different viewpoints of the same thing or event, certainly, but that's not the same as the different invented imaginary friends. These will often vary on basic facts, as illustrated above. Your imaginary God doesn't appear to be one with Christ, because you state that Abraham didn't know Christ.Some Christians have an imaginary friend who doesn't send people to hell, because they perceive their friend as benevolent and forgiving. So, you will presumably regard these people as believing in a false God. The thing is, if you choose to do this, you end up proving my point. A God who does send people to hell and a God who doesn't are different Gods, not the same thing seen from a different viewpoint.So, do you believe that all the imaginary friends of all the theists in the world are real? Or just those of self-described Christians? Or just those of Christians who share your own theology (there might be very few of these)?And, as a matter of interest, about what percentage of the world's present population will be going to hell? You can ask your friend about this one, surely.Incidentally, you didn't actually reply to my point about mind-arranging in a way that meant anything. Your God chooses to mind arrange in strange geographic patterns. The patterns fit an analysis that suggests strongly that it is humans arranging the minds of other humans, not your God.

The rational thought I am engaged in involves the notion that God is better able to define what good is than any man-made relativistic model could attempt to. I don't suppose God does things for no reason at all anymore than I suppose anyone does things for no reason at all - so the issue of his doing something for no reason and my response to it doesn't arise.- Your 'sense' of God having done evil arises out of an attempt to bring God down to man-sized levels so as to be able to compare his actions with those of other men. Hence daddy-killing-puppy analogies. Understandable but problematic. You are trying to compare an infinitely large apple with a fairly puny pear.In your killing of a baby we can find nothing good in you to speak of. In God's case, God knows that his action (or inaction in the case of his not preventing you killing a baby) will result in pain and loss for the parents involved. But if Gods intention is to leverage this pain for a potentially greater gain then his action/inaction is good.See pain this way perhaps. There are only two states a person can be in - they can either be "lost" or they can be "found". If lost then pain can be used as a tool by God in his attempt to bring a person to the found position. That would be a good thing God would have done. Once found, God can use pain in the process of sanctifying (making holy) a person. That too is a good thing God will have done (based on the defintion of what is good given earlier). The western worlds philosophy on pain is that it is to be avoided and masked and removed. The fact of the matter is that pain is always a way of telling us that there is something wrong.- A world economic system requiring ever increasing consumption of ever diminishing resources and you're talking to me about human reason. Millions wallowing in preventable poverty, hunger and sickness in the face of the gluttony and greed of millions of others ...and you're talking about human empathy?- The entity proved to me he exists and that is sufficient for me to bow to his authority. I'm not sure how not being able to empirically prove him to you alters the rationale for me bowing to him. It appears you consider the central tenets of empiricism-the-philosophy to be factual rather than merely philosophical.- Given the topic, I would have thought it more useful to invoke the case of an artificial intelligence orders of magnititude below me in terms of "size". Your hyperbole would deflate somewhat where you to insert "ant-sized AI" into the ethics equation. Such a move would better reflect the relative sizes involved.Your case is not aided by jumping to the conclusion: "killing and torture for no reason whatsoever". The stated reason for eternal punishment is clear. Eternal beings punished eternally for eternal transgressions of law. It's not all that different to what happens in our own temporal justice systems. Temporal crime attracts temporal punishment for a time. The units involved need to be kept constant.- Given the eternal enormity of each persons death, I don't think a focus on the method of arriving there is warranted. I'm not downplaying the horrendous pain and suffering and terror that can be experienced - but a person is either facing an eternity of unimaginable bliss or an eternity which will cause whatever temporal anguish they suffered here to be something yearned to be returned to.- I'm not inclined to see Hell as a place with a literal lake of fire. I think the Bible attempts to convey the horror of Hell using the limits of human experience and language. I suspect actual Hell to be far worse than described.Once you understand that you are an eternal creature and that your sin is carried out in the eternal realm (time being a subset of eternity) then you'll be more accepting of the fact that your sins debt to God attracts an eternal price. The nature of eternity is a bit of a mystery - but there is no arguing with the logic of the currency.- How "greater and lesser in the kingdom of God" is decided upon I am not sure. But I gather it has something to do with our deeds in this life (aside from that which gains us entry into that kingdom - which has nothing to do with deeds). It seems reasonable to suppose there will be degrees of punishment in Hell too - based on deeds.I'm not sure what you mean by "on a whim". God hates sin with a furious hatred that is unimaginable. In the measure you love (children) you hate (the actions of a paedophile) afterall. Given God so loved the world and what he did for it, one can only begin to imagine God so hating their sin..I think the problem is with people downplaying the seriousness of sin - not realising that they are viewing through unholy eyes and God is viewing through throughly holy eyes.- Would it be fair to say that you came to embrace an empiricist philosophy? If all you had was Christian Religion at that point it wouldn't be surprising that your belief would evaporate like the morning dew. Whilst this says nothing about Gods existance or no, it does point to the power of empiricism to dispel fairytales.- I'm not sure I understand. I'm not suggesting that you need rely on anyone elses belief. I am asking whether you will grant that God could render you as sure of his existance (sans classically empirical evidence/proof) as you are of any empirical thing you care to mention.- But the whole tone of your rejection of God is based upon a philosphy which is subjective, unprovable and unsupported by any objective evidence. Empiricism has nothing to say about the unempirical other than that it has nothing to say. You seem to be using the silence inherent in empiricism as an argument. Which would make it an argument from silence. Which would be a fallacious thing to do.Edited by iano, : No reason given.