Tag: Christianity

What was a question that made you question your faith?

“For me it was the Problem of Evil, the apparent contradiction between the existence an all-powerful, all-loving God and the horrible things which continue to happen in the world.”

Question from A:
What was the question that made you say, “that doesn’t sound right?” For me it was when someone told me that I wasn’t going to heaven on my being a good person. When I asked why they told me I had to believe in Jesus and if I didn’t nothing else mattered, it didn’t matter that I was naturally giving and compassionate. The thing that would send me to hell was the fact that I didn’t believe. I thought, “well that sucks!”

Answer:
For me it was the Problem of Evil, the apparent contradiction between the existence an all-powerful, all-loving God and the horrible things which continue to happen in the world.

Of course there are lots of answers to that question: God’s testing us, Satan is responsible for the bad stuff, it’s a necessary consequence of free will, it’s our own fault things have been crap since the Fall, we only perceive things as evil when in fact they’re all part of God’s plan…and so on, or combinations of that lot.

If my inherited Catholic faith had supplied just one answer, I’d probably have accepted it and carried on, but it coughed up this whole mess of answers, some compatible, some contradictory. It really drove home that even the priests and bishops didn’t really know what’s going on, and if they didn’t, nobody did. Thus came the first desire not to simply accept what the supposed religious authorities told us kids.

Not long after that I was an agnostic, and my slow journey to atheism had begun.

– SmartLX

Christian Atrocities vs Atheist Atrocities

“What’s more important is whether the atrocities were committed because of Christianity/atheism, either in an effort to specifically spread Christianity/atheism or because some tenet of Christianity/atheism commanded it.”

Question from Brian:
I’ve debated many christians in the past few weeks, and they all seem to think atheism creates evil. Can you name a few christians that have committed atrocities? (Besides Hitler, we all know that one)

Answer:
My go-to guy is Sir Thomas More, pious 15th-to-16th-century Catholic who put people to death for the crime of owning Bibles in the English language. Incidentally, he was English. Here are some more. And a whole pile of awfulness went on during the Thirty Years’ War between Protestants and Catholics.

Thing is, you’re not going to get far in an argument by comparing kill counts between Christians and atheists (though you might surprise some people when you have something to contribute). What’s more important is whether the atrocities were committed because of Christianity/atheism, either in an effort to specifically spread Christianity/atheism or because some tenet of Christianity/atheism commanded it.

Atheism comes out of such comparisons rather well, because
1. it was the Communists who forcibly spread atheism the most, and only because Communism declares itself ideologically incompatible with major religions, and
2. there are no tenets of atheism, besides statements of its actual position. Nowhere does it say, “There is no God, therefore do this.”

– SmartLX

Where’d it all come from? Religion, that is?

“The Christian religion three days after Jesus’ death, if you believe any of what’s written, was fewer than twenty people, none of whom had yet written anything of note.”

Question from Caalia:
Did the bible start the Christian religion? In other words, were there believers in yahweh, his creation,the ten commandments, etc. before the compilation of the bible?

I heard the bible was written years after the said events (be they fictional or factual). If so, where did the believers in Yahweh before the compilation and writings of the bible get there ideas from? What was there source, if not the Torah, or the bible?

Answer:
There were certainly believers in Yahweh, creation and the Ten Commandments before Christianity, and before the Bible as we know it was completed, because those are all Jewish beliefs as well as Christian.

These events are all laid out in detail in the Torah, which is actually the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy from what’s now the Old Testament. As far as anyone knows it was started over a thousand years BC and finished five to six hundred years BC. People believed in these things and passed them down through their families long before they wrote about them. Literacy was hardly widespread in the ancient world.

Specifically Christian beliefs, i.e. those pertaining to Jesus, began during Jesus’ supposed lifetime, with people claiming he was the Messiah. Stories about his resurrection began soon after the supposed date of his execution, and the Gospels were written something like five to fifty years after that when there was already a fairly large population of Christians.

Generally speaking, “sacred” texts are written to spread beliefs, not to start them. They’re written by people who already believe, or at least want others to believe. The Christian religion three days after Jesus’ death, if you believe any of what’s written, was fewer than twenty people, none of whom had yet written anything of note. Only years later did they commit it all to parchment.

– SmartLX

Changing Christians

Question from Brian:
Hi, I’m a recent christian turned atheist. I’ve found multiple atheist friends at my school, and they’re closer than I’ve ever had before. But there’s only one problem: I love this girl, but she’s a hardcore christian. She refuses to even consider anything beyond her blind limitations. Do you have any ideas for me? I’d really appreciate it.

Answer:
Just as there are as many specific rationales for Christian belief as there are Christians, there are as many specific escape routes as there are ex-Christians. There’s nothing which works for everybody, and the process can take so long that you don’t know what really did it. I took 15 years.

So, help us out by providing the answer to this question: why, as specifically as possible, does your girlfriend believe in the first place? If you know this already, or if she’ll tell you when asked, great, otherwise try to figure it out. I don’t think you’ll get far without this information.

Get back to me in a comment and we’ll have a think about it.

– SmartLX

Disrespectful Friend

“It’s ultimately God himself who’s supposed to do the converting, and the prescribed way for mortal Christians to help is to keep Him in your face.”

Question from Rick:
I have a friend who is a christian. He is aware that I am an atheist, and do not believe in god/gods or anything like that. But when we talk he always seems to slip a bible reference in there. And I don’t mean scriptures. For example, we’ll be having a conversation about women (as most guys do) and he will always say something like, “well that’s how they are, its right there in the bible, you know what I mean?” And I always respond like “I hear you talking, but you know I don’t believe that.” And that starts a whole argument about who’s right or wrong. I like him as a person, but dislike him as a christian. Any thoughts on how to handle the situation?

Answer:
It’s hard to go on the words alone. The way in which he says such things would tell us a great deal more. He might simply not consider your atheism before referring to the Bible as if you’re about to agree with him, implying that he’s inconsiderate or simply a bit self-absorbed. (Perhaps he doesn’t have many atheist friends.) Or, perhaps he has you pegged and he says things like that to draw you into a religious discussion, which apparently works like a charm.

I tend to suspect the latter, in the absence of context. Christians are told to spread the capital-W Word whenever possible, and very little emphasis is placed on making it stick. The idea is that the more a man simply thinks about God, even in terms of denial, the more likely he is to come around. It’s ultimately God himself who’s supposed to do the converting, and the prescribed way for mortal Christians to help is to keep Him in your face.

Back to your friend…if you don’t like to hear about the Bible, someone like this isn’t going to lay off if you don’t straight up ask him to. If you do ask, and he carries on, maybe you’ll know more about why. Or you could just ask why.

Keep us posted, Rick. Anyone else have friends like this?

– SmartLX

“I don’t understand.”

“Nice people and nasty people can be right or wrong about the same things.”

Questions from Jaselynn:
If you take the subject as a sign that I am a pushover, do not be fooled. It is true that I grew up in a “Christian” home…and it is also true that the home fell apart, but not because of God. Because of my father. My father molested my sister. Horrid, I know. But despite how much I tried, I could never hate him. I hate what he did, but not him. Would you have me hate my father? I don’t. I love him. I really don’t hate anybody.

I used to be consumed by anger. You know nothing of anger unless you have felt what I have. It was like a fire burning in me at all times…just waiting for an excuse to explode. I could have killed someone once. Thank the Good Lord that I didn’t! I hated God. Everything I did was just a show. It wasn’t real. And then it changed…it was slowly…an evolution, of sorts( I mean no disrespect when I say that.)

It started with a friend. Just one person. Someone reached out to me. Of all the people in the world Christians, Athiests, Catholics, Mormans, Hindus. And I know people of each of these religions or nonreligions as the case may be. And only one friend reached out. And she was a Christian. I know that some Christians are fake. I know that some of them are the most horrid people in the world…but that is because they don’t really Know God. But Emily was different. She actually cared. She lived it.

What do you say about the Christians who do live differently? Do you believe they exist? I’ve met them. The real Christians give from thier heart, put others before themselves, give to the poor, and love no matter what. NO MATTER WHAT. Do you think that it is a different God? I just don’t understand how you can lump all Christians into one catigory. You get angry when we lump you laws, theorys, beliefs in one category, why do you do it to Christians.

Answer:
All we tend to say about Christians in general is that they are most likely wrong about one specific set of beliefs: those related to the truth claims of Christianity, like that a god exists and that Jesus rose from the dead. I guess that’s just one category, but it’s a very broad category.

That doesn’t stop Christians from being kind, loving, forgiving, generous people. As you mention, neither does it guarantee that they will be thus, as some Christians simply aren’t. Nice people and nasty people can be right or wrong about the same things. So we call Christians out when they do bad or dishonest things, just as we would anyone, but we try not to generalise their character to encompass all Christians. Few generalisations apply to two billion people at once.

Emily apparently did a great thing for you, helping you forgive your father and deal with your rage. Christianity is the tool she used to do it, though she might have used others. (For example, what would it say about human beings if the only good reason to forgive someone were because we’ve been ordered to by an authority?) The fact that it worked says little or nothing about the actual existence of the god by which her actions were inspired.

Therefore I’m glad Emily was able to help you, and I think she’s a good person, but I still think she’s probably wrong about God nonetheless. There are good Christians just are there are good Hindus, good Muslims, good atheists and good agnostics. Simply having the wrong or right religion, if any, doesn’t say much about a person’s character.

– SmartLX