Dangerous ideas of the damned
By Mike ~
I attend church with my girlfriend and her family even though I've recently rejected Christianity. I won't go into my de-conversion process, perhaps another day, but recently I wrote a summary of the reasons why I can no longer consider myself a Christian. The pastor at the church last Sunday issued a challenge to anyone in the church that day who hadn't "accepted Christianity" to write down any reasons the at we might have for not accepting the faith and to speak to to him and discuss our reasons. So in the late hours of the night, the day before church, I decided to write out a little essay declaring why I could no longer consider myself a Christian.
When we got to the church I decided I was going to give the Pastor my writings after the sermon, but after the sermon, I just couldn't do it, I saw the futility of it. I figured in my head, after his emotionally charged sermon and the emotionally charged worship service in which the worship pastor began weeping, that one of two things were going to be the result of issuing my writings to these people.
Either way, it was going to be awkward and I just figured it would be best to just leave it be. But! I didn't want my late night brain droppings to go to waste and since I don't feel that there is anyone I can share my musings with right now, I thought of you wonderful people!
So, here it is, my unedited essay and in no way complete, the core reasons why I am not a Christian.
There are a myriad of reasons why at this point in my life I no longer consider myself a Christian, but I’ll try and list the most important ones.
First, there is simply not enough evidence to back the supernatural claims in the Bible. Personal and unverifiable revelations and supposedly revealed scripture should not be accepted as evidence of a supernatural force.
The Biblical God is a cruel and sadistic being and the New Testament doesn’t change that. Concerning the Old Testament I find it odd that I am asked to “consider the times” when confronted with the moral laws created by a being that is supposed to be all knowing, all wise and timeless. And yet, the overall morality of the Bible is not all knowing, all wise or timeless.
Religion and morality are not mutually exclusive, one can be moral and religious, immoral and irreligious, moral and irreligious or immoral and religious.
Jesus, even among non-Christian’s, is usually considered by default the epitome of morality and I disagree. The core of Jesus’ philosophy is that all humans are sinful beings that are in need of redemption. The only way to redeem oneself is through Jesus and to truly accept him as your lord and savior. The punishment of not being redeemed in this lifetime is eternal punishment in a hellish afterlife. This is one of the most grossly immoral beliefs ever concocted. I think it is shameful that parents and other adults instill this belief into the minds of young children or the minds of adults who are/were in their most vulnerable positions and are not equipped with the cognitive tools to reason against such depravity. I think those that teach this type of belief system are participating in an emotional blackmail that has gripped humanity for thousands of years and this type of emotional blackmail is not exclusive to Christianity. There is simply not a single sliver of objective evidence that one can show that I or anyone else will or has spent an eternity in suffering because we committed thought crime during our temporal lives.
If there is a higher and more transcendent being or beings in the universe it doesn’t have to be the Biblical God. In fact if there are beings that exist outside of the bounds of the physical universe and they or it created everything. I have my doubts that it was the Christian God or the Muslim God or the Hindu God or any of the various god’s that human beings believe to exist. I don’t think that a transcendent being that could create the whole universe would be so nit picky to care whether or not his flawed and infinitesimally finite creations acknowledged his existence or not. But, if the universe does operate in this fashion, that the Christian God requires his acceptance as a savior in order so that his flawed creations can escape the eternal punishment which is said they deserve. Then it certainly cannot be said that this being is benevolent and has humanities best interests at heart. If the universe operates in this fashion the vast majority of mankind will have been created for eternal damnation, this world is a factory for the damned. How can an all powerful, omniscient and “benevolent” being be blind to this? If I had a personal revelation and through this found that the universe did operate in this fashion and found that one did end up eternally damned for non-belief, I would be saddened by such a revelation. It would mean that many great, deserving or innocent people, past, present and future, are going to be thrown as trash into an abyss manufactured by a supposedly loving being. I don’t believe that this is true and the chances of it being true are as good as any other supernatural claim without evidence.
Concerning the matter of the “ultimate questions” I value truth. I cannot with confidence tell a young child or friend that the world operates the way it does in the Biblical paradigm. I cannot with confidence follow intellectually deceptive groups like the Young Earth Creationists that lie about the age of the Earth and evolution, while making the same refuted and deceptive claims concerning the natural world over and over and over again. But alas, selective bias and just pure laziness runs deep and those captured by such movements will rarely venture far enough to investigate the refuted claims that they are being fed by these groups.
Anyways, I’ll close it up at this point, it’s hard to write about topics such as these and even harder at 4 A.M. This is a good baseline of about where I’m at concerning Christianity and religion in general though. I know many people that practice their beliefs for the most part mean well and I know for many people these beliefs are the reason that they might have pulled themselves out of hellish life conditions. I also know that there are religious groups and organizations that do a lot of good in the world. But none of these things are evidence that the supernatural claims of their beliefs are true. The truth, personally, is what is important to me if I am to be a follower of any system of belief.
So, this is what I was going to give to the pastor. I just wanted something that was rather short and matter of fact and I figured I'd fill in the blanks with our discussions, but as I said it didn't happen and probably won't ever. As pointed out these people are the YEC types that think the world is 6,000 years old and evolution is some secular conspiracy created by the devil or something. It really is rather sad that these people that are so arrogant on the subject and yet, have never bothered to pick up a book on evolutionary biology or read "Origins Of The Species" to figure out what Darwin actually said concerning Natural Selection, instead they make rash caricatures of the man that are way out of the bounds of reality. It's sad really.
When we got to the church I decided I was going to give the Pastor my writings after the sermon, but after the sermon, I just couldn't do it, I saw the futility of it. I figured in my head, after his emotionally charged sermon and the emotionally charged worship service in which the worship pastor began weeping, that one of two things were going to be the result of issuing my writings to these people.
- They were going to raise their biblical force fields and frustrate me to no end with their illogical biblical conclusions about the universe.Their emotional sensibilities would be harmed and I would feel bad for attacking a belief system that these people base their core life purpose and the way in which they provide for themselves.
- Their emotional sensibilities would be harmed and I would feel bad for attacking a belief system that these people base their core life purpose and the way in which they provide for themselves.
Either way, it was going to be awkward and I just figured it would be best to just leave it be. But! I didn't want my late night brain droppings to go to waste and since I don't feel that there is anyone I can share my musings with right now, I thought of you wonderful people!
So, here it is, my unedited essay and in no way complete, the core reasons why I am not a Christian.
There are a myriad of reasons why at this point in my life I no longer consider myself a Christian, but I’ll try and list the most important ones.
First, there is simply not enough evidence to back the supernatural claims in the Bible. Personal and unverifiable revelations and supposedly revealed scripture should not be accepted as evidence of a supernatural force.
The Biblical God is a cruel and sadistic being and the New Testament doesn’t change that. Concerning the Old Testament I find it odd that I am asked to “consider the times” when confronted with the moral laws created by a being that is supposed to be all knowing, all wise and timeless. And yet, the overall morality of the Bible is not all knowing, all wise or timeless.
Religion and morality are not mutually exclusive, one can be moral and religious, immoral and irreligious, moral and irreligious or immoral and religious.
Jesus, even among non-Christian’s, is usually considered by default the epitome of morality and I disagree. The core of Jesus’ philosophy is that all humans are sinful beings that are in need of redemption. The only way to redeem oneself is through Jesus and to truly accept him as your lord and savior. The punishment of not being redeemed in this lifetime is eternal punishment in a hellish afterlife. This is one of the most grossly immoral beliefs ever concocted. I think it is shameful that parents and other adults instill this belief into the minds of young children or the minds of adults who are/were in their most vulnerable positions and are not equipped with the cognitive tools to reason against such depravity. I think those that teach this type of belief system are participating in an emotional blackmail that has gripped humanity for thousands of years and this type of emotional blackmail is not exclusive to Christianity. There is simply not a single sliver of objective evidence that one can show that I or anyone else will or has spent an eternity in suffering because we committed thought crime during our temporal lives.
If there is a higher and more transcendent being or beings in the universe it doesn’t have to be the Biblical God. In fact if there are beings that exist outside of the bounds of the physical universe and they or it created everything. I have my doubts that it was the Christian God or the Muslim God or the Hindu God or any of the various god’s that human beings believe to exist. I don’t think that a transcendent being that could create the whole universe would be so nit picky to care whether or not his flawed and infinitesimally finite creations acknowledged his existence or not. But, if the universe does operate in this fashion, that the Christian God requires his acceptance as a savior in order so that his flawed creations can escape the eternal punishment which is said they deserve. Then it certainly cannot be said that this being is benevolent and has humanities best interests at heart. If the universe operates in this fashion the vast majority of mankind will have been created for eternal damnation, this world is a factory for the damned. How can an all powerful, omniscient and “benevolent” being be blind to this? If I had a personal revelation and through this found that the universe did operate in this fashion and found that one did end up eternally damned for non-belief, I would be saddened by such a revelation. It would mean that many great, deserving or innocent people, past, present and future, are going to be thrown as trash into an abyss manufactured by a supposedly loving being. I don’t believe that this is true and the chances of it being true are as good as any other supernatural claim without evidence.
Concerning the matter of the “ultimate questions” I value truth. I cannot with confidence tell a young child or friend that the world operates the way it does in the Biblical paradigm. I cannot with confidence follow intellectually deceptive groups like the Young Earth Creationists that lie about the age of the Earth and evolution, while making the same refuted and deceptive claims concerning the natural world over and over and over again. But alas, selective bias and just pure laziness runs deep and those captured by such movements will rarely venture far enough to investigate the refuted claims that they are being fed by these groups.
Anyways, I’ll close it up at this point, it’s hard to write about topics such as these and even harder at 4 A.M. This is a good baseline of about where I’m at concerning Christianity and religion in general though. I know many people that practice their beliefs for the most part mean well and I know for many people these beliefs are the reason that they might have pulled themselves out of hellish life conditions. I also know that there are religious groups and organizations that do a lot of good in the world. But none of these things are evidence that the supernatural claims of their beliefs are true. The truth, personally, is what is important to me if I am to be a follower of any system of belief.
So, this is what I was going to give to the pastor. I just wanted something that was rather short and matter of fact and I figured I'd fill in the blanks with our discussions, but as I said it didn't happen and probably won't ever. As pointed out these people are the YEC types that think the world is 6,000 years old and evolution is some secular conspiracy created by the devil or something. It really is rather sad that these people that are so arrogant on the subject and yet, have never bothered to pick up a book on evolutionary biology or read "Origins Of The Species" to figure out what Darwin actually said concerning Natural Selection, instead they make rash caricatures of the man that are way out of the bounds of reality. It's sad really.
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