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Author Topic:   The moment of illumination
Kader
Member (Idle past 3726 days)
Posts: 156
Joined: 12-20-2006


Message 1 of 8 (400106)
05-10-2007 1:00 PM


  • At what moment did you believe (and why) ?
  • Since then did you ever doubted that you might be wrong ?
    For me it was inevitable.
    My parents being from different religions (muslim and catholic) they've never imposed any belief on me. When I was a kid though I believed in God because my parent did, they never gave me the bible to read or the Qu'ran, but they talked about God.
    I never really was part of a group of people sharing the same belief (no such thing as agnostic group..and even if there was, I didn't even know I was agnostic until not too long ago)
    As I grew up, I met many people, most of them religious (either christian or muslim) and they tried at some point to epxlain there view of God to me(with a confidence I admired). But everytimes they applied a flawed logic. The Qu'ran says its true, and so it is. If I had the audacity to point it out They gave me the "you don't understand yet" look. So I stopped, and I kept nodding until they finished.
    I couldn't understand the faith they had in a book. They didn't question it. I know that there is a lot of different interpretation, but each time, there is always a leap of faith, hence you don't know, but you choose to believe (and act as if you know).
    What made me agnostic is simply that unfounded stubborn faith and mostly the lack of integrity. I've seen muslim drink and gamble, I've seen christian preaching war etc etc.
    I said it was inevitable for me because I think that in most cases, if you don't mold the belief of a child early on, he will most likely be agnostic or atheist. This is from personal experience (hence, unfounded).
    *unfounded : For believer its founded on many things, like the number of people believeing and the validity of the message.
    Edited by Kader, : No reason given.

  • Replies to this message:
     Message 2 by AdminPhat, posted 05-12-2007 8:43 AM Kader has not replied
     Message 4 by Larni, posted 05-14-2007 11:37 AM Kader has not replied
     Message 5 by Doddy, posted 05-14-2007 10:41 PM Kader has replied
     Message 6 by Equinox, posted 05-16-2007 12:40 PM Kader has replied

      
    AdminPhat
    Inactive Member


    Message 2 of 8 (400321)
    05-12-2007 8:43 AM
    Reply to: Message 1 by Kader
    05-10-2007 1:00 PM


    This topic has potential
    Hi, Kader. This topic has potential, but I want you to edit it and narrow the focus.
    Do you want Christian or Muslim or Faith Believers in general to comment on what it is that makes them believers?
    Do you want other agnostics and/or atheists to comment on why they conclude their beliefs as they do?
    In other words, what is your target audience?
    In relation to the title, what is the moment of illumination? Is it a relative epiphany for each individual? Are you wanting to open this topic up to religious and non-religious people alike?
    Here are the things you said that jumped out at me:
    Kader writes:
    I couldn't understand the faith they had in a book. They didn't question it. I know that there is a lot of different interpretation, but each time, there is always a leap of faith, hence you don't know, but you choose to believe (and act as if you know).
    What made me agnostic is simply that unfounded stubborn faith and mostly the lack of integrity. I've seen Muslim drink and gamble, I've seen Christian preaching war etc etc.
    I said it was inevitable for me because I think that in most cases, if you don't mold the belief of a child early on, he will most likely be agnostic or atheist. This is from personal experience (hence, unfounded).
    So you have several potential topics.
    Perhaps you could edit your topic and present it as a list of questions to people. Do you personally believe that you have had your moment of illumination yet or are you still open for further data?
    Get back to me with an edited version and I will consider promoting you. It looks like a Faith/Belief topic to me.

    This message is a reply to:
     Message 1 by Kader, posted 05-10-2007 1:00 PM Kader has not replied

      
    AdminPhat
    Inactive Member


    Message 3 of 8 (400465)
    05-14-2007 3:15 AM


    Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

      
    Larni
    Member (Idle past 163 days)
    Posts: 4000
    From: Liverpool
    Joined: 09-16-2005


    Message 4 of 8 (400505)
    05-14-2007 11:37 AM
    Reply to: Message 1 by Kader
    05-10-2007 1:00 PM


    For me it was when I realised that the universe did not need a god.

    This message is a reply to:
     Message 1 by Kader, posted 05-10-2007 1:00 PM Kader has not replied

      
    Doddy
    Member (Idle past 5909 days)
    Posts: 563
    From: Brisbane, Australia
    Joined: 01-04-2007


    Message 5 of 8 (400563)
    05-14-2007 10:41 PM
    Reply to: Message 1 by Kader
    05-10-2007 1:00 PM


    Kader writes:
    At what moment did you believe (and why)?
    For me, it was quite sudden.
    I had always been a Christian. My parents, and all my family, are very strong believers, going to church around 2-3 times a week and giving thanks for every meal. I had, even in my early teens, some doubts, but I stayed faithful for three reasons (though in hindsight they aren't that good):
    1. If so many people around the world are Christians, there must be some truth to it.
    2. Pascal's Wager (I had considered this myself, without hearing it or reading about it anywhere until much later) and the goodness of the Bible (morality etc).
    3. A strong feeling I had that there must be something more than this life.
    I had always been taught science, and was always considered one of the smart kids. Though I have argued for young-earth creationism, that was before I learnt (and understood) the theory of evolution. My intelligence was what I considered to be my greatest asset, as I was never terribly sporty or confident. This would play a part in my conversion, but I'll get to that later.
    My conversion all happened when I was about 15. I read through a New Scientist article on the neuroscience and evolution of faith. That effectively challenged my third reason for believing - if it was a natural phenomenon, then it could be subject to disease, genetics etc. God wasn't directly in control.
    After considering this for a period of a few days (yes, I read that article not two days before a church convention, so I had four days of listening to the preachings with, for the first time, no straight-out faith that it was true), I came to the realisation that this could just be the mind playing tricks on me. This realisation was sudden - I once likened it to the revelations of truth that we heard about in church. Once I acknowledged this possibility, it was all downhill from there.
    Over the following year, I read about the neuroscience of morality, theology (arguments for and against the existence of God), evolutionary biology etc. This reading challenged my reason 1, and effectively killed reason 2. So, I was left an agnostic, who now thought evolution was the explanation for life AND religion.
    However, my next step was telling my parents and friends. Now, revealing ,my agnosticism (which to most, is just the same as atheism) was generally met with incredulity and, in the case of my parents, sadness. But that wasn't the worst of it.
    You see, by this stage I was up to the age when I was to choose what to do with my life - what to study after high school. I intended to study neuroscience, but after hearing so many of my arguments resting on what the brain is capable of, my parents were quite upset at this choice. In fact, they practically forced me to consider other options.
    This is where the intelligence part comes in. I was told, again and again, that 'man's wisdom is of the flesh' and other silly things like that. I was reminded of Bertie Russell's quote :"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence."
    Now this sort of thing pushed me over the edge into the realm of atheism. I simply realised that this belief system was trying to save its own skin by forbidding anyone from thinking about it too hard. I couldn't stand for that. I was not going to give up my intelligence, and go become a farmer or something (actually, my parents wanted me to be an optometrist), simply because cognitive neuroscience takes one a little too close to some forbidden knowledge. So, I essentially acknowledged that Christianity was certainly wrong. Once I did that, it wasn't hard to consider all religions to be wrong too, although to this day I remain sensibly agnostic against the core of most non-Abrahamic religions (though I am firmly skeptical of any claims of mysticism or supernaturalism).
    Kader writes:
    Since then did you ever doubted that you might be wrong?
    Of course. In fact, I doubt myself on purpose. One must challenge oneself repeatedly, to ensure that the beliefs you hold are compatible and logical.

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    This message is a reply to:
     Message 1 by Kader, posted 05-10-2007 1:00 PM Kader has replied

    Replies to this message:
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    Equinox
    Member (Idle past 5141 days)
    Posts: 329
    From: Michigan
    Joined: 08-18-2006


    Message 6 of 8 (400724)
    05-16-2007 12:40 PM
    Reply to: Message 1 by Kader
    05-10-2007 1:00 PM


    My Spiritual History (very long!)
    I wrote up my spiritual history about 5 years ago. I've pasted some of it here, after cutting out long sections to make it shorter. It's still pretty long. I've marked the biggest places I removed stuff with "......" Enjoy!:
    To start off, I was raised Catholic. My family was loving and except for a few minor rough spots, my childhood was overall quite good. I was an altar boy for a number of years, and we always went to church on Sundays. Many of my friends were there, and I attended Sunday School as well. Theological specifics weren’t generally discussed in church. I think that this was mainly because most of the congregation didn’t go there for acade
    ic styled lectures, but more for a sense of community. . .
    One of the earliest memories I have of a direct religious experience was after I had disobeyed my parents and endangered myself by going onto a vacant construction site with a friend. We got caught, and I was put into a bedroom alone to "think about what I did". I was crying and sorry, and there was a statue of Jesus in the room, along with a crucifix. I remember looking at that and wondering if I could be forgiven. I was forgiven, and knew that I had a personal relationship with Jesus.
    In Sunday School, there was sometimes a discussion of theological concepts, and often there were discussions of how we should live - things like sexual chastity, etc. I remember feeling that it would be a good thing if the entire world were Roman Catholic. Around the same time things like the Cosmos series and a general interest (and aptitude) in science led me see a wonderful world that God had made. The understanding of the vastness of the universe increased my awe and wonder for our existence and the world around us. This was reinforced by family camping trips, where I could be closer to creation.
    As an alter boy I was able to be more involved in serving God. I remember that before I was old enough to be an alter boy, I was impressed by the devotional act the altar boys did by carrying the small display cross up the aisle in front of the priest. While I eagerly waited to be old enough to be an altar boy, I made a wooden cross (with my dad's help) that I would carry raised up in front of me as our family entered church. My walk with Christ had begun.
    . . . .
    Learning about God's creation was fun. I had more than enough interest in the fields of Biology, Zoology, Geology, Forestry, Meteorology, Botany, Ecology, History, and other fields to supply a lifetime of career enjoyment, and chose engineering mainly for financial reasons. Not that I found engineering boring - it was and is wondrous as well. . . ..
    During this time my faith in Jesus and God was strong and was becoming more full as I rapidly learned and thought about Christianity. As I got into my late teens, I began to be able to reason through my beliefs, and thus clarify what some points of the doctrine must be. I could see that it would be unjust to condemn native people from the jungles of Borneo to Hell if they had never heard of Jesus, so God must make some allowance for that. I assumed that the death of an unbaptized infant must be treated similarly. In this way I spooned out a little of the dirty, false "bathwater" that had gotten entangled with the "baby" of Christian truth.
    Like the "problem" of those who hadn’t heard the gospel, many other things that seemed to be problems could be easily resolved by refraining from reading the bible too literally. One example is Paul’s instruction that women couldn’t even speak in church (1Tm 2:11-15 and other locations) - it must have been a cultural artifact that wasn’t meant to still be important. With this and so many other cases, simply working it through with the assumption that God is fair clarified each situation. So I was able to spoon out a little more bathwater here.
    However, as more and more parts of the doctrine were clarified this way, I noticed that I hadn’t been able to resolve a few insignificant points.
    For instance, knowing that the vast majority of the people who are born in Iran become Muslim adults and die Muslim, then the infant/native defense described above no longer worked. If I had been born in Iran, I knew that I’d almost certainly die a Muslim too. In today’s world, I’m sure they all hear about Jesus many times and consciously rejected him. Doesn’t someone who consciously rejects Christianity have to go to Hell? So then, is it fair to send someone to eternal torment because they were born in the "wrong" country, through no fault of their own? Their eternal torture seemed obvious unless much of the New Testament was tossed out wholesale, but it didn’t seem fair. I hadn’t figured out a just way to resolve this yet, but I was sure I would. This was clearly just another small spoonful of bathwater -- that could be easily resolved -- and would result in a strengthened faith.
    I also couldn’t understand the purpose of human attempts to influence God’s decisions, such as prayer. If god has a plan, and knows the future, then how could I decide to pray to influence that future? I obviously couldn’t change the future, because then the omniscient God couldn’t know it - yet if the future couldn’t be changed, then what was the point in praying? The more I thought about it, the harder it became to reconcile. Like the other logical problems, this must have been thought about and figured out hundreds of years ago by minds much greater than mine. I just needed to find the answer, and this would also strengthen my faith.
    . . I was soon wrestling with several other similar conundrums as well, so I started asking around for help with my increasingly difficult bathwater project.
    I discussed some of these problems with my fiance, she thought about it, but in the end didn’t have any answer other than "well, I’m sure God can give you the right answer when we are in heaven". She (and others) warned me that by thinking these things I was being ungrateful to the God that loved me, and that I could end up burning in Hell if I wasn't careful. The resulting guilt and fear kept me away from these line of thought for a little while, but each time they did, I ended up wondering again after a little while. After I continued to fail to understand, I went to Father Mike, the priest at St. Patrick’s church near my hometown to find out what the right answers were. This was in December of 1988 or so. I knew that these simple minded problems would be child’s play for the wise old priest. After all, they all go though the seminary, and since the answers must have been figured out centuries ago, they’d probably be one of the first things covered. Maybe the class was something like ASP 101 (Answers to Simple Problems 101). I specifically went to the priest at St. Patrick’s church and not St. William’s (where I had grown up) because I was embarrassed - I didn’t want the priests there to know that their devout altar boy had wondered about such silly questions.
    Father Mike listened attentively as I explained the first question. I don’t remember which one I started with or even exactly which ones I brought up. He nodded knowingly, and without directly answering it, asked what other questions I had. I went through several questions in this way. He briefly responded by saying that these were all good questions, and that all of us have questions like this from time to time. He gave me two books (one was "A Christological Catechism" by Joeseph Fitzmeyer), and our time was up. Each was only about 150 pages long.
    As I drove home, I was a little surprised that he hadn’t given a clear answer to any of the questions. I supposed that the two small books he gave me must have the simple answers, and he probably just didn’t want to take time from his lofty schedule by going through them. These types of questions must have been around for nearly 2,000 years, so the time-tested answers must be in the books. I was so eager to look into this that I stopped in a parking lot to start reading. Strangely, I couldn’t find anything right away, so I decided to read them more thoroughly in a location that wasn’t freezing cold.
    I quickly dove into the books when I got home, but found that they were detailed descriptions of how to decide historical or doctrinal questions based mostly on the New Testament. (Like whether or not Mary was ever-virgin, Mark 6:1, etc.). I had asked about logical problems, not scriptural support for doctrines, so they were of little use.
    I had tried asking a lot of people (many well respected in the church), and never got a satisfactory answer. It seemed that the church either wouldn’t or couldn’t answer these basic logical questions in a way that made sense. I read some from the Bible, but that didn’t help either - mainly because the Bible is very long and is not laid out to discuss a topic at a time. I found I couldn’t go the Bible’s table of contents, look up, say, "Omniscience vs. Omnipotence", and turn to page 968 for the answer.
    This made me confused. I started to wonder a tiny little bit about whether or not Christianity was a good pathway to truth and understanding. As I’ve alluded to before, logical questions such as those above initially encouraged me to dig more deeply into Christianity, and because I knew that Christianity would provide answers that made sense, this process strengthened my faith. However, I found that Christianity didn’t always provide these answers, so I began to be a bit less enamored with Christianity (but only a bit - it was still the obvious truth). Additionally, any wondering about the truth of Christianity caused a twinge of guilt. How could I, a mere human, think about God and Jesus with any thoughts other than praise and worship while still being submissive? I wondered if any thinking about these questions was allowed without God feeling that I was being rebellious to God's sovereignty.
    Throughout this time, my scientific understanding of the world continued to increase. Understanding the details of things like ferns, volcanoes, puff adders and rainbows made them all the more wonderful to experience. I began to see the glory and wonder in even little things like snowflakes and spiders. So many things were so intricate, so beautiful, so awesome - and so ubiquitous! Even away from the woods, I saw this in my everyday life on campus. It was never farther than a pine tree or my own hand. Existence demonstrated this wonder at every turn, showing that God must be truly awesome to be able to create the world we live in!
    . . . ..
    I continued to think about and discuss theology. I began to suspect deep down that after spooning out the dirty bathwater, there may be nothing left! Could that be the truth? Could there be no baby (no truth in Christianity)? Could it be all bathwater? I couldn’t imagine that my entire world, for all of my life could simply have been wrong, but faint glimmers of that suspicion were beginning to be seen. However, any thought in this direction invariably caused terrible feelings of guilt - the idea that I was an unworthy person for "refusing to submit to God, who loved me". I also continued to have recurring fears about the horrors of hell. Because of these factors, I continued to put huge amounts of effort into convincing myself of the truth of Christianity. My eternal salvation required that I put away these dangerous doubts once and for all. Additionally (though not as important) these doubts indeedthreatened my mental security, my relationship with my fiance, and all my plans for a happy and fulfilling earthly life.
    . I continued to go to Bible studies, talk with other Christians, and attended some Campus Crusade for Christ meetings. It became clear that asking any of the questions that I was wondering about either gave the same convoluted non-answers I got from Father Mike, or (more often) produced a visceral, negative response. I quickly learned that asking a serious question got me ostracized for the rest of the meeting, so I only asked them at the end, and even then as nicely as I could. That didn’t work either, and asking them one-on-one in private was even worse. As every effort to make sense of Christianity failed, those faint glimmers of doubt became brighter. The tension between my Christian upbringing and simple reasoning was making my life difficult. On one hand, my world had always been the Christian world, and I had followed the tenets. I was set to marry a good Christian, and proceed easily into a prepared, comfortable, Christian life. On the other hand, my growing skepticism was becoming undeniable, and the feelings of guilt and fear were weakening. It was beginning to look like the Christian part of this planned life - the part that so many people said was indispensable - might simply be wrong.
    . . . (more logical problems removed)
    Christians were quite clear that people like me, who honestly used our "god-given" minds were certain to burn if those "god-given" minds came to the "wrong" conclusion. There are millions of people in the United States alone like this, and even if it were only one person, than that would still be a vicious injustice. What about the Nazi Death Camp Guards? What they did is nothing compared to what God must be doing this very moment to Anne Frank and others who died Jewish. Sure, being gassed in a "shower" for 10 minutes is bad, but how does that compare to writhing in agony for hundreds, millions, and billions of years? The argument that "God isn’t doing it, the devil is" doesn’t wash either. After all, who is supposed to be "in control"? If God is in control, then nothing happens that he doesn’t want to happen. Didn’t God design and create everything in the universe, knowing and creating all future events?
    The problem of suffering caused perhaps the most problems. I didn't know it at the time, but this problem has been discussed so much that it has a name - the Theodicy problem. It's basically stated as "if an all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful god exists, then how does innocent suffering exist". This covers all kinds of situations, such as the earthquakes mentioned earlier to even the nasty situations brought about by God himself (such as the babies killed by God in the Biblical flood). I also had logical problems about omniscience and omnipotence. As I mentioned before, any omniscience for even a moment in even one entity seems to prevent any other free will anywhere and at any time in the universe. Because free will means that either choice can be taken, and that omniscience allows only one choice, free will anywhere, at any time is not compatible with omniscience anywhere, at any time. I’ve tried to write down many of these logical problems along with the Hell ones elsewhere.
    These thoughts and discussions continued to move me away from Christianity throughout 1991. Sometime around here I had to admit that I wasn’t Christian in any real sense. What was I? I leaned toward a belief in some kind of God, and I saw Christianity as a good thing that helped people live moral lives, but Christian doctrine simply didn't make sense to me. Was I a Deist, a Pantheist, an Agnostic, or something else? I’m not sure. I was sure that a loving God could not punish me for using the mind he gave me. I had no reason to doubt that the Bible argued consistently for Christianity, but the Bible wasn’t as important as logic because historical facts are always somewhat in doubt, while logic can be tested here and now. The pangs of guilt still arose from time to time, and when they did they often kept me from thinking about religion for a while. Thinking back, these recurring pangs of guilt and the fear of Hell had held back my spiritual growth for a total of several years. I refused to let myself be controlled by guilt and fear any longer, and purposefully continued thinking about God.
    While I was getting closer to understanding what evoked a spiritual response in me, I began to pick up on the local culture. The culture in this area is strongly Christian. The strong Christian influence brought Christianity back into my thoughts, prompting me to start reading the Bible more and learning about Christianity’s birth and origins. Most of the Bible reading I had done previously was in the context of church or Bible studies. I hadn’t read the Bible much when I was struggling with whether Christianity was true simply because I hadn’t seen anything about those logical problems in it. I assumed that the Bible was clear and consistent in it’s support of Christianity, and being outside of Christianity hadn’t eliminated my desire to understand how the Bible addressed the logical questions I had been asking back in 1990. Just because Christians couldn’t address the logical problems didn’t mean that the Bible couldn’t.
    So I began reading the bible, and also reading descriptions about how the Bible was organized and what purpose each part served. To say that the Bible was not what I expected is an understatement! I expected the bible to be a clear exposition of the tenets of Christianity, a seamless whole. One of the first things that jumped out at me was how disjointed the Bible was. The god described in the book of Genesis sounded more like Zeus than the omniscient God I was familiar with, and the New and the Old Testaments were very different theologically. . .
    Before I could find a section that unified everything, I started noticing cases of injustice. For instance, throughout the Old Testament (especially in the books from 1 Samuel through 2 Chronicles), kings often anger God by worshipping other gods . . .
    Other cases were much more graphic and clear. In 2 Kings 2:23-25, Elisha is teased by some kids calling him a "baldhead". Elisha calls a curse on them from God, and two bears come out of the woods and maul 42 of the kids. Isn’t the mauling of kids a little severe for teasing? The story of king David’s baby is even more surprising (2Sam 11 & 12). From his rooftop, king David sees a woman bathing and has her brought to him for sex. She gets pregnant, so David successfully plots to have her husband killed in battle. As punishment, God makes the baby suffer for a week and then die. Why punish the baby for David’s actions? In all these examples, it is only fair to read a lot before and after so as to understand the context. Often, understanding the context still results in a terrible injustice. By reading the Bible with an open mind instead of with blind subservience, I came across many instances like this, even ones I had known about but hadn’t realized were unjust. For instance, many of us know the Passover story, when God "hardened the Pharaoh’s heart" so the Israelites would be kept captive until God "showed his glory" by killing the firstborn of every house except the Israelites (Ex 11&12). How could a just god kill thousands of people - children, babies, teenagers, adults - who weren’t even involved in the dispute? How could anyone consider this action anything other than heinous crime - the killing of innocent civilians to make a political point? Isn't that the very definition of terrorism?
    The Bible (especially parts of Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy) had many divinely decreed laws directed that were cruel, regardless of when they were enacted. For instance, beating a slave so severely that he couldn’t get up until the next day was fine (Ex 21:20), as was raping a woman and then buying her for marriage (Dt 22:28). However, if you swore (Lev. 24:13) or told fortunes (Lev. 20:27), you were to be stoned to death. The many rituals and rules in the first five books of the Bible contain things like finding out if a woman is unfaithful by making her drink dirty water and seeing if it makes her abdomen swell and her thigh rot (Nm 5:11-31). If she's innocent, the jealous husband isn’t even reprimanded.
    I also noticed that parts from both the Old and the New Testaments seemed to be ignorant of basic science. Like in Gen 30:37, where Jacob puts striped branches in front of sheep when they have sex so that their babies will be born striped, or the where the devil takes Jesus to a high mountain to see all the kingdoms of the (apparently flat) world in Mt 4:8. I suppose that these could all be due to miracles that God performed, but they don’t seem to be described as miracles. Instead, they appear to be described as a normal part of everyday occurrence. How could a divinely inspired book be so deficient about science? Wouldn’t God know the workings of the world he made? Like so many other Biblical problems, this makes sense if the Bible is a human creation, and it doesn't make sense if it is a divine creation.
    Speaking of the Gospels, reading the New Testament was a bigger shock than reading the Old Testament. I thought the Old Testament contained contradictions and a wandering theology, but it looks like a straightforward instruction manual compared to the Bible when the New Testament is added. Like the Old Testament, when the same event was described multiple times, accounts often could not be reconciled. It was becoming increasingly obvious that instead of well organized treatise on Christianity, the Bible was a mishmash of sometimes contradictory legends.
    Once I stopped trying to run all the accounts together, and let each book speak for itself, they all made a lot more sense. This realization was indispensable for getting some meaning out of the Bible. Without it, the mounting strain caused by all of the problems mentioned above prevents rational thinking, and blind acceptance is all that can be left.
    If I hadn’t already decided that I wasn’t Christian, then the realization of just how vicious, incoherent and false the Bible was as a whole would have caused me a lot of grief. Instead, it merely changed my view of the Bible from a great work of divinely-inspired humans to a hodgepodge of clumsy works by imperfect humans. That’s not to say that there isn’t a lot of good and beautiful stuff in the Bible - there is. Because much of my spirituality was centered around the love between people and the incredible world we live in, it was unavoidable to conclude that a perfect God was not involved with the writing of the many books of the Bible. Simply put, the god of the Bible is too small for me. This made me an atheist when it came to the Christian God, though an agnostic with respect to a more universal god.
    . . . . .
    With all the emphasis on Christianity in America (and here in rural Michigan), it was inevitable that I would look into the history of Christianity and the Bible.
    At first I was surprised at how difficult it was to find information on the early history of the Bible. Churches had a lot of readings from the Bible, but not nearly as much about the history of the Bible. After reading the Bible, I thought that I knew the basics - like obviously the Gospel of John was written by the apostle John, etc, so that was a place to start.
    . . . . . . . . . ..
    The first thing that came out of that process was that much of the information I thought I "knew" apparently wasn’t true! I had always understood that the Gospels had been written by eyewitnesses, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Also- both Christian and secular scholars agreed that some of the books (letters) that say they are written by Paul are probably forgeries! The history of the Bible is obviously a huge subject, with different people claiming many different views.
    I studied early Christianity and the formation of the Bible for years on my own from 1997 on. I don’t have a degree in Theology, so I have looked for agreement among theologians and scholars on which facts are true. By and large, agreement was found on most matters of evidence. . .
    . . . . . . . . . . ..
    Many of the early Christianities may have incorporated parts of other religions that were popular at the time. Just as Judaism had incorporated some of the Zoroastrian ideas about heaven, hell and Satan during the Babylonian captivity, so some of the early Christianities appear to have incorporated some ideas of Mithraism, such as the Eucharist, a birth on December 25th, and the halo, etc. Because the Gospels and other writings were written so long after Jesus’ death, it seems very possible that these other religious stories were fully incorporated into the oral stories of Jesus’ life by then.
    About 15 to 25 years after Jesus died, Paul wrote letters to various groups. These appear to be the earliest writings in the New Testament, written by someone who was not a witness to the life of Jesus. Then, another 15 to 40 years after that, the Gospels were written, again apparently by people who weren’t witnesses, and who may have had access to Paul’s writings. So of course the writings of Paul are "supported" by the Gospels, the Gospels were probably influenced by Paul’s ideas! Moreover, that's like someone today (in 2003) writing about events that happened in the 1950s - events that they didn't see, in a world without the media, where nearly everyone is illiterate, and lifespans average under 30 years.
    It is clear that by around 100 CE (70 years after the death of Jesus), many writings were being circulated, some by Paul, some by others claiming to be Paul, some by other authors. The fact that forgeries (such as 3rd Corinthians and many others) were very common in the ancient world is well accepted by all, and is even attested to in the New Testament (2Thess 2:2). At the same time, a wide variety of different Christianities sprang up, including the Ebionites, the Marcionites, and dozens of others. Of course, each group could pick from the many documents in circulation, so each group used only the documents that supported it’s views. As one of the groups became influential in Rome, it helped shore up it’s influence by trying to win people from the various other Christianities. To do so, it had to refute groups on each end of each spectrum of belief. For instance, to refute the Gnostics, who thought that the god who had created this world wasn’t the highest god, this group had to claim God was supreme. But to refute the Arians, who taught that Jesus was subservient to God, this group had to claim that Jesus himself was God. Then to refute the Docetists, this group had to claim that Jesus was fully human. Out of this ongoing battle, the doctrine of the Roman Church was molded into a doctrine which was flexible enough to counter the various other Christianities. Take a look at the Nicene Creed - it is pretty much a laundry list of refutations of alternative Christianities.
    When the Emperor Constantine converted to Roman Christianity in the beginning of the 4th century, the Roman church gained the official backing of the government. This helped fight the various other Christianities (which now could be labeled as "heresies"). Constantine’s Church was also now able to select those documents that best supported this doctrine. For hundreds of years these various "scriptures" and Christianities had interacted and circulated. It took the course of centuries for the Roman Catholic Canon of Scripture and the Roman Catholic Doctrine to "win", with the help of the government at the end.
    . . . . . .. A result of all this circulating and copying by hand has been the changing of the documents that ended up in the New Testament. This is why there are more differences between our early copies than there are words in the entire New Testament! While most of these are unimportant, such as spelling errors and missing words or lines, others are theologically significant. In fact, none of the over 5,000 early copies of the New Testament documents completely agree with each other (except, of course, for the most miniscule scraps). Intentional changes to make the documents say what the copyist wanted them to say appear to have happened often, like the addition at the end of Mark’s Gospel, the insertion of the doctrine of the trinity in 1Jn 5:8, and many others. . . . ..
    I’ve always been concerned to leave this world a better place than I found it. This, coupled with a desire to openly discuss our various spiritual journeys led me to the local Unitarian Universalist Church. It was there that I found a religious home among others who had a strong moral compass, and were happy to talk about whether it had been a gift or if they built it themselves. I fit at the Unitarian Church because their 7 principles were things I already believed in, and they didn’t ask me to believe a bunch of stories that many Biblical scholars and even clergy have themselves rejected as historically accurate. Most importantly, the Unitarian view that the respect for the inherent worth of others was more important than doctrinal differences made this a safe place for people with heretical views like my own.
    Since then I’ve developed an earth-centered spirituality, which celebrates the solstices, equinoxes, and their thermal equivalents as part of the wonderful world we live in. My current spirituality is focused on this world instead of some afterlife, and especially on making the world a beautiful, sustainable world for our grandchildren, their grandchildren, and indeed all of life for the coming thousands of years. Celebrating life, cultivating love, and working for a sustainable, peaceful world are, I think, real family values.
    May your mind soar like the Eagle-
    Equinox

    This message is a reply to:
     Message 1 by Kader, posted 05-10-2007 1:00 PM Kader has replied

    Replies to this message:
     Message 7 by Kader, posted 05-16-2007 2:42 PM Equinox has not replied

      
    Kader
    Member (Idle past 3726 days)
    Posts: 156
    Joined: 12-20-2006


    Message 7 of 8 (400746)
    05-16-2007 2:42 PM
    Reply to: Message 6 by Equinox
    05-16-2007 12:40 PM


    Re: My Spiritual History (very long!)
    It was very well put, and I enjoyed reading it from A to Z.
    Thank you for posting your story!

    This message is a reply to:
     Message 6 by Equinox, posted 05-16-2007 12:40 PM Equinox has not replied

      
    Kader
    Member (Idle past 3726 days)
    Posts: 156
    Joined: 12-20-2006


    Message 8 of 8 (400748)
    05-16-2007 2:47 PM
    Reply to: Message 5 by Doddy
    05-14-2007 10:41 PM


    Doddy writes:
    So, I essentially acknowledged that Christianity was certainly wrong. Once I did that, it wasn't hard to consider all religions to be wrong too, although to this day I remain sensibly agnostic against the core of most non-Abrahamic religions (though I am firmly skeptical of any claims of mysticism or supernaturalism).
    I understand perfectly well, but I always try to keep all the doors open (agnostic) with every religions and especially with the concept of God.

    This message is a reply to:
     Message 5 by Doddy, posted 05-14-2007 10:41 PM Doddy has not replied

      
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