Guest post by Former Christian Atheist
Thanks to Bruce for welcoming this guest post on his blog. I always enjoy reading Bruce’s blog, and I hope this guest post will fit. This post is a response to a request by Bruce for posts that address conversion from religion to atheism, in particular from those who may be a few years into the process, and how it feels to live without religion. I have written about my deconversion from Christianity elsewhere on my own blog (http://atheismforpeace.blogspot.ca/2010/06/my-deconverstion-to-atheism-part-1.html), so you can read the details there if you wish. I may repeat myself a bit here just to make this post complete, but the point here is to describe my perspective since becoming an atheist. I hope that this post may help anyone who is going through a similar process or who is questioning their faith but afraid to give up their religion.
I have been an atheist for about five years now. At least, 2007 is when I technically stopped believing in God, though the process was a gradual one that probably progressed throughout my adult life. The actual time point at which I stopped believing in God was surprisingly sudden and distinct. I would say that in early 2007 (as late as March) I still believed that God existed and that I wanted to relate to him although my view of God had shifted significantly since my coming of age two decades earlier. But, by May of 2007 I no longer believed that God existed. The final step was that sudden for me. In late 2006 and early 2007 I read a few books that looked at the character of God in a new light, including If Grace is True and If God is Love both by Phillip Gulley and James Muholland. More importantly for my conversion process I also read a book called Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. The book basically follows two stories: a general history of Mormonism and a specific case of murder in the 1980s by two Mormons who believed they were instructed by God to perform the murders. I knew virtually nothing of Mormonism prior to reading the book, but it served as a striking example of how religion can cause people to believe the unbelievable. The religion is clearly a fabrication from 19th century America, with roots that are distinctly American in culture. Yet, there are millions of followers around the world, in what I can only understand as blind faith. The book illustrated the strength of religious influence, and how humans clearly yearn for some meaning to their life, which often seems to be filled by instructions and commands by a person in power – or a religion. I had met a few Mormons, and they seemed as convinced that their religion was true as any other religious person, including the Christians I had grown up with. Yet there was no doubt in my mind that the entire religion was a fabrication. If a religion could essentially be constructed by one man in the relatively modern times of the 19th Century to a point that millions of people worldwide were followers, how much more possible was it that a religion could have developed 2,000 years ago in a time when the availability of information was incomparably lower than in the modern era? (Literacy was lower, formal education was rare, books [at least as we know them now] and newspapers were non-existent).
I then came across a number of the so-called “new atheists” including the most famous, Richard Dawkins. I had previously read a few critiques of Dawkins by Christians, but never read any of his own books or articles. In early May 2007 I was watching TV late one evening and saw Dawkins interviewed on the Canadian television show The Hour. (The interview I watched is available on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNHo00gjHRk Contrary to the way he was viewed by Christian apologetics, he seemed down to earth, very rational and well-spoken, and what he said rang true. He was not the pompous arrogant and bull-headed demon that many Christian writers had made him out to be. I read his famous book The God Delusion. The house of cards came tumbling down.
Now, a few books and a television interview in early 2007 were not, of course, solely responsible for my loss of faith. I had occasionally asked myself the hypothetical question: “What if God doesn’t exist?” I sometimes wondered what kind of person I would be if I didn’t have God looking over my shoulder. But, up until that point it was simply a mental exercise I went through, I never for a moment actually doubted his existence. I had always known that God was there watching me, reading my thoughts. I find it hard to pinpoint why it was at this time that my doubts about God’s existence suddenly became more focused. Suddenly, instead of simply theorizing what it would be like if God didn’t exist, I started to realize that it is very likely that he does not exist. I think that Spring of 2007 was the culmination of a very slow march towards rationalism that had begun two decades earlier when I left home in my late teens. I had studied science extensively, and always accepted the science I learned, but also always somehow fit whatever I learned around the model of God that I had been steeped in while a child. This is an important point because I think it is very, very difficult for people who have been raised in religion to give it up. For me, there was always the nagging fear of my impending death and the threat of eternal punishment in hell if I doubted God’s existence.
In any case, at that time I finally realized that I no longer believed God exists. The final step was not really a conscious decision for me. It was more of a realization that the notion of a god was no longer a reasonable belief. It was as though I looked around and realized I still secretly believed in Santa Claus as an adult while everything I had experienced in the world around me screamed that he could not possibly exist.
So, like a child taking the butterfly wings off for the first time in the deep end of the swimming pool and realizing that it can indeed float without them, I considered that the world might work just fine without a god. Julia Sweeney has described a similar experience in her book Letting Go of God:
…as I was walking from my office in my backyard into my house, I realized there was this little teeny-weenie voice whispering in my head. I’m not sure how long it had been there, but it suddenly got just one decibel louder. It whispered, ‘There is no god.’
And I tried to ignore it. But it got a teeny bit louder. ‘There is no god. There is no god. Oh my god, there is no god.’…
And I shuddered. I felt I was slipping off the raft.
And then I thought, ‘But I can’t. I don’t know if I can not believe in God. I need God. I mean, we have a history’…
‘But I don’t know how to not believe in God. I don’t know how you do it. How do you get up, how do you get through the day?’ I felt unbalanced…
I thought, ‘Okay, calm down. Let’s just try on not-believing-in-God glasses for a moment, just for a second. Just put on the no-God glasses and take a quick look around and then immediately throw them off.’ And I put them on and looked around.
I’m embarrassed to report that I initially felt dizzy. I actually had the thought, ‘Well, how does the Earth stay up in the sky? You mean, we’re just hurtling through space? That’s so vulnerable!’ I wanted to run out and catch the Earth as it fell out of space into my hands.And then I remembered, ‘Oh yeah, gravity and angular momentum is gonna keep us revolving around the sun for probably a long, long time.’
I can relate to some of this description quite well. In addition to what she describes, my situation was complicated by the fear that I might die while I had the not-believing-in-God glasses on and go to hell for eternity just because I happened to die while I was trying out atheism for 30 minutes. It was a bit like coming up to a train track and thinking, ‘I need to cross the tracks, but what if the train comes along out of nowhere and mows me down just at the moment that I step across?’ When I finally overcame my fear of being annihilated in a moment of fury like an Efrafan rabbit (from Richard Adams wonderful novel Watership Down), and stepped gingerly onto the tracks, my whole perspective changed. Instead of looking up the track in fear of an oncoming train, I looked down at the tracks in detail for the first time and realized they were decrepit and could not possibly bear a train. No train would ever be coming along those tracks and I could linger as long as I like quite safely. Once that was established, the opportunity to really open up my mind to some serious questions availed itself and it was not long before the whole house of cards came tumbling down. Indeed, once I had my Julia Sweeney moment, the whole ordeal was over in a matter of minutes. I was through with God instantly as I realized that the whole game was a farce. There was no desire at all to cling to a false god for comfort. I simply set god aside and moved on.
Once I moved into atheism, there were of course many questions to tackle. I wondered about the afterlife. I accepted almost immediately that the whole thing was man-made and that when I die I will simply not exist anymore. For some time after my de-conversion, I felt quite sad that the prospect of an eternal heaven was gone, but my sadness was also tempered by the realization that I no longer had to fear hell. I realized that there was nothing to fear about being dead any more than there was to fear about before I was born. That thought was a reassuring one as I left behind the indoctrination of fear that Christianity brands its followers with, often without them realizing just how much fear is used to maintain the faith. Do I ever still fear death and hell? Yes, occasionally. Those fears instilled in childhood are difficult to overcome. Very occasionally I do have a very brief moment of panic as I ask myself that ridiculous question: “What if I’m wrong?” Then I always recognize that I’m about as likely to be wrong about the god of the Bible as I am likely to be wrong in believing that we are not all living in some computer matrix such as that in the popular Keanu Reeves movies. These days my biggest fears are something along the lines of Rene Descartes’ evil demon – occasionally I worry that there is in fact a deity, but one that is malicious and malevolent, waiting to torment us all for eternity regardless of our choices here on earth. But then I recognize the absurdity of such ideas and the complete lack of evidence to support them, and that such beliefs and fears and bordering on the schizophrenic.
As I recognized that my existence would end with my death (such an obvious concept now), I very quickly started to value my life much, much more deeply than when I had been a Christian. My view when I was a Christian was that this life was just the preamble to something much greater, that I had all eternity to look forward to. All of sudden I realized that was not the case, and I realized that I’d better make the most of every day that I have in this life.
Another issue that is perhaps of interest to those Christians who are doubting their faith, or those who are cynical about people such as me who have de-converted, is the question of morality. Where do your morals come from, if not from God? As a Christian I would have asked this very question myself, but as an atheist it seems patently absurd. I believe that morality is a human construct, and therefore it does not come through revelation with the divine. Humans created morality. Morality comes from human society. Some human behaviours are almost universally considered immoral, such as murder, rape, theft. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand why these things are immoral. Human societies wouldn’t survive if they were all acceptable behaviours. But there are a lot of human behaviours that are only considered immoral from a religious point of view, for example blasphemy and a host of sexually acts such as pre-marital sexual intercourse. But, usually these types of “immoral” behaviours vary depending on the religion. In any case, I have not found that I’ve plunged into any sort of immoral abyss now that I’m an atheist. If anything, I am probably a more moral person now than when I was a Christian. Certainly I am a more responsible person in terms of contributing positively to society because I now realize that human society is not some temporary situation on the way to eternity in heaven. Rather, I now realize that human society is all we’ve got. It is precious. Things like protecting the environment for future generations have become much more important for me now that I realize the earth doesn’t have to end in an apocalyptic disaster as Jesus comes to establish his kingdom.
Another interesting phenomenon that I’ve recognized in my years since becoming an atheist, is a bit of a role reversal in my point of view on the world and society. When I was a Christian, I sort of looked down on non-Christians. I pitied them for not understanding the truth, for not being saved. Now I have to admit that I sort of look down on Christians. I pity them for not understanding the truth, for not living life to its fullest. I’m not proud of feeling this way, and it is probably just a natural pride in my personality that causes it, but I’m also trying to describe that there is an irony in the thought that I still find most Christians look down on me for not having the truth. But now the difference is that I feel sorry for them. It’s sort of like being looked down up on by a child. In fact,
The world seems much more fragile to me now that I am an atheist. When you believe that there is a God watching over the world, and that he has a long-term plan for humanity, you assume that things can’t go dramatically wrong. Sure, bad things like earthquakes and floods do happen, but the ultimate plan must remain intact. God isn’t about to let a large meteor collided with the earth tomorrow and end all human life because it doesn’t fit with his plan. (There is too much other destruction described in the book of Revelation that has to happen first!). But, now that I don’t believe in God, I realize that we are indeed alone on this rock floating through space. We have to be so careful to take care of both ourselves and nature because the whole thing could come crashing down and no God would be there to step in and keep us on course.
So, I had often wondered what kind of person I would be if I were no longer a Christian. I had wondered if I would be more selfish, I would lie more easily. The reality has been the exact opposite. I hope that I am a much more pleasant and selfless person now that I’m an atheist. The world no longer revolves around me. I am but a speck of dust in vast universe. While my life has great significance to those around me while I am alive, I am completely insignificant in terms of nature and the universe. It is not about me. I am just a cog in the great machinery of nature.
One thing that seems pervasive in relating to Christians since my de-conversion is a complete lack of understanding that I don’t actually believe in God anymore. Most Christians seem to think that atheists are rebelling against God, that we hate him for some reason. Perhaps we’ve been so hurt by religion when we were younger that now we feel hate for God and for Christianity and are like a rebellious teenager who goes off on his own in a huff. But I don’t hate God. I just don’t believe he exists. My position is exactly the same as the position a Christian is in when they consider the existence of something they don’t believe in, like unicorns or Santa Claus. I’m not trying to belittle Christians’ beliefs by making that comparison, it really is that way for me. I don’t hate unicorns, I just don’t think they exist.
In a situation I experienced in which a few atheists were discussing religion with a few Christians, a Christian friend of mine summed up the differences like this: “Either you believe in God or you don’t. That’s about all there is to it.” I very much agree with this statement, and I would take it further and say that you can’t really choose whether you believe in God or not. Either you do or you don’t. If you are a Christian who is finding that you doubt God’s existence, then you may already feel that you don’t believe he exists. You might pretend that you still believe he does exist, but deep inside only you know whether you believe it or not. If you don’t believe in God, there isn’t much you can do to choose to believe in him. I could pretend to believe in God, but at the end of the day I just don’t. It would be a dishonest act for me to pretend I believe in God. It’s not a choice I am capable of making any longer. Ultimately, we all owe it to ourselves to ask the really difficult questions about our beliefs and see where the chips fall. Ultimately the only person who suffers if you don’t is yourself.
That was well written and touched on many of the same points I have considered as a former Christian, now atheist myself.
The whole morals issue is so… odd to me. I’ve been extensively questioned as to how I can be moral and teach morals to my children as an atheist. It’s a stupid assed question that never fails to piss me off. And I usually end up just not bothering to answer after saying exactly that.
I too, could relate to so much of this. This in particular really stood out for me – “…the indoctrination of fear that Christianity brands its followers with, often without them realizing just how much fear is used to maintain the faith.” I didn’t realise how much my faith was based on fear till afterwards.
One teeny quibble I would have, is with the statement that the only person who suffers if you don’t ask the hard questions is yourself. Families suffer too, and are so much happier and better off once us ‘fundies’ have begun to see the error of our ways. Unless they are all ‘fundies’ too, I guess, in which case they’d be distressed to see us leave.
Great post, thanks
Your post was honest and sincere ~ thank you for sharing.
The more I think about the ‘where do your morals come from if you are not a christian’ irks me. I think next time I am asked a similar question I will reply, well i guess those christians who sin against god are lacking morals and must not be real christians…
I agree with you quibble. After I wrote that, I realized exactly the point you made, that the suffering often extends far and wide, especially in families. But, tt was a dramatic way to finish the post…
Thanks for sharing. I am somewhere between dogmatic believer and atheist. So far I have not experienced deconversion in sudden steps; instead, it’s been like watching my hair fall out. Every day there were a few hairs in my brush. Then I noticed I could see part of my scalp. Then a little more, and a little more … till I finally should realize I am indeed bald. At this stage in my life, I only notice the hairs in my brush.
Well, Tex, all I can say is “Bald is Beautiful!”. Of course, you have to get through the patchy not quite bald yet stage first to get to bald. That can feel a little homely:)
awesome post!
“The world no longer revolves around me. I am but a speck of dust in vast universe. While my life has great significance to those around me while I am alive, I am completely insignificant in terms of nature and the universe. It is not about me. I am just a cog in the great machinery of nature.”
This seems to me to be a profound statement and one that shows you have grown to overcome the me, me, me attitudes that abound in our society. Christianity is, in so many ways, all about you being special and saved and God noticed you. In reality, although I am very important to a few people in this world and that counts, I am really not that important in the big picture. That’s just the way it is.
I enjoyed reading about your life since leaving Christianity, ChristianAtheist.
Thanks for your comment. I agree, and I think one of the things that gives Christianity such success in numbers and makes it so hard for many people to give up is that it takes away the sting of accepting that you are just a few particles of meaningless star dust, temporarily aggregated on an insignificant rock in the corner of the universe. The religion makes people feel special, but even more than that, I think it is naturally hard for us humans to accept the harsh reality of the universe we live in. In many ways Christianity is nothing more than an adult version of a favourite security blanket that children sleep with at night to comfort them from the cold hard reality of the world.
Thank you for such a well-written and interesting post. It seems that your experience with reading about the Mormons and realizing how unbelievable their religion is, is akin to John Loftus’s “outsider test of faith” where you look your Christian faith as if you were an outsider looking at another faith-could be Islam, Mormonism or any number of others.
This was very well written and quite accurately reflects the journey I am currently on and thoughts I am having. I too can almost pinpoint when I stopped believing in God, june 29th of this year, though I suspect now, I started doubting when I read a book on Mormonism in december 2011. It all seemed so extremely ridiculous and fabricated, and as I read the bible from cover to cover in the beginning of this year, less and less of it made sense to me.
I am only starting out life as an atheist and still have a long way to go excepting that there is no heaven and that God isn’t watching every move I make or reading all my thoughts. For the first time, in my life, I feel like I can be human which is a wonderful wonderful feeling and I am allowed to do things like falling in love which I felt I couldn’t really do as a Christian, not without guilt, because Jesus should be my number one.
I agree on the moral issues though and even if the few of my Christian friends who know I’ve removed myself from the faith think I’m on a slippery slope, I’m not really seeing how I’ll change as my dreams of getting a career and family are exactly the same now as when I was a Pentecostal.
In some twisted way, becoming an atheist/agnostic/free thinker (I’m not comfortable yet with labling myself) feels like being born again. Only it’s a much greater feeling now, knowing that I have this realitvely short time in history to make a difference, than when I got born again as a Christian!
Hi Linn,
Wow, you are a very new non-believer! Congratulations on freeing yourself. Undoubtedly one of the things the people experience upon waking up from religion is the immense relief of guilt. It is very much like having a huge burden lifted off your shoulders or being born again, all terms that ironically Christians use to describe being enslaved by their religion.
It is always interesting to hear from people who have very recently realized they don’t believe in God, so thanks for sharing. I don’t know what your friends and family are like, but be aware that as you share your new found “unfaith”, there will undoubtedly be many who will try their utmost to re-convert you. After all, they believer you are now going to hell, so they are only acting in what they think is your best interest.
Enjoy your new found life, and I hope we will hear from you again.
Thanks for your reply. I have been luckier than most in that my family is not religious and that I was only a fundy whilst I lived in the UK. Having moved back to Norway, I won’t have the hard task of answering to church leaders or friends, but I guess it will come out eventually and then we will see what happens.
The hardest bit for me will be, “the battle of the mind”, (long live Christian jargon). For example, although I know that what I have discovered must be the truth, my sub-consciousness seems to be a little behind and I catch myself praying and saying grace before I eat. I’m still worried about God’s wrath because I no longer believe and for some weird reason, I am now totally obsessed with listening to all the gospel songs I used to sing in the worship choir at church. I didn’t much care to listen to Christian music when I was actually a Christian. But the fear I guess, will pass in time.
I am glad there are so many good resources out there for de-converts like all the different blogs and podcasts and to meet like minded people and communicate online.
You can read my de-conversion story on my blog:
http://www.littlelioness.wordpress.com
I’ll no doubt write lots more about faith issues in the time to come as it’s a pretty big part of my life now.
Will check out your blog as well.
So when you were a Christian, you never felt God’s Presence or the peace of God that
passes understanding? Because the first time I repented of my sins, sincerely, I truly had a born again experience. The grass was greener, the sky was bluer, I felt a bubbling joy inside. I have felt the joy of the Lord, I have felt His love, the peace that passeth understanding just as it says in the Bible. God went from being a million miles away to
living inside me. God is a Spirit. I can never doubt that there is a God. I know that there is
a God. The first time I went to church, the first time I was ever in a pentecostal Church, Church of God, based in Cleveland Tn. …..the holy Presence of God was so strong to me that I sat in Church that day and cried. I just find it hard to believe that you never felt
His Presence when you were a Christian. My grandson saw an angel, one of God’s,
in their kitchen one night. I personally know other people who have seen angels.
One of daughter and son-in-law’s friends saw my grandson’s guardian angel when he was an infant, in fact she tapped him on the shoulder and Jonathan turned around expecting to my daughter or her husband, but it was this feminine angel in white with long hair, she scared Him so bad, he ran out of the house and later told them what had happened.
Oh yeah, there is a God. For sure. I pray and ask God to protect my family with His angels from dangers and enemies, seen and unseen. Bless you Bruce, you and your family. And may God and His angels watch over you all. I live in Ky.
This is not my post but let me give you my take. Perhaps Former Christian Atheist will respond to your comment.
Yes, I had a sincere emotional experience just like most Chrstians do. I experienced this many times over the years. At the time I certainly felt God was in me and with me.
However, I now now that my experience is no proof that god exists. Other religions have similar experiences, religions that many Christians think are cultic or false. I also know that drugs can enduce a similar experience.
Ever been in a stadium filled with people in the midst of a playoff run? Awesome, and every bit as emotionally stimulating as a so-called spirit filled church service.
Belief in god will always, at best, be a personal, subjective experience. Nothing wrong with that but not anything I have interest in.
Thank you for commenting.
Bruce
I imagine the feelings of joie de vivre is a common universal human experience, it’s normal and healthy. To be encumbered with the weight of “sinfulness” imposed on one via generations of strictured brainwashing, one absolutely requires the catalyst of redemption via Christ to become normal and healthy as one should have been in the first place. The special conversion experience though has an observable downside not experienced in people with no religion. The newly saved or reborn tend to develop a narcissistic inclination to think themselves better, more deserving and more special than other ordinary humans. This particular kind of neurosis can and often does lead to further delusions and even severe mental illness. Monotheism appears to attract or breed fanatics on a large scale, it is inherently narcissistic to think your god is the only one.
Thanks for sharing this. I totally agree with ” it is inherently narcissistic to think your god is the only one”
Thank you Bruce for sharing your story with such admirable and generous frankness, a great encouragement for others to also self reflect, ask questions and expand their minds. Ingroup outgroup mentality where you live must be a sore challenge, all strength to you!
Hmmm once I confided to a Christian couple — friends I made online — as they’d been through quite the faith journey in their explorations of trying to find which Christian sect they belonged to. I remember asking all the questions of doubt because one of them had once went to bible school because he wanted to be a priest and I greatly valued their views. I said that I couldn’t reconcile the God of justice with the God of love and if God wasn’t good it was hard to worship him.
He said that it came down to whether or not I believed God was good and only I knew the answer. He said to be honest with myself and not answer “yes” just because it’s the “right” answer.
Some time after I realised I was atheist, I went back to them with my answer.
I think they held the view that a god of love would not damn people to eternal torment. And that God could not fault me for using my intellect in my search for truth.
I will always have a warm place for them in my heart.
I would love to able to embrace the notion that God is love and God is good but I can’t. As I look at the suffering in the world, I am left with two explanations: God is a mean, vindictive, psychopath or he doesn’t exist. As an atheist, I choose the latter. If I am wrong, I suspect there will be “hell” to pay.
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/about_the_holy_bible.html
Canadian atheist and Bruce, you may both have already encountered the work of Robert Ingersoll, for those of your followers or people who are still persuaded that the bible is inerrant, his superb anatomy of it is incomparably reasonable – it’s a long read but very worthwhile. Thank you Bruce for allowing me to post on your blog every now and then, it’s all incredibly interesting.
Thanks for commenting.
I just got Robert Ingersoll’s biography this week. It will be a couple months til I get to it (I am a book addict) but it looks like an interesting read.
This is an article I read on moral grounding while holding a relativistic world view would like your take if you have one.
Whenever I look at the issue of moral relativism, I find that there are many different ways it doesn’t make sense. The concepts of right and wrong must be grounded in something beyond our personal opinions or feelings. One of the problems of relativism is that is sinks in the quicksand of meaningless morality. Let me explain what I mean.
If relativism is true, then societies themselves cannot advance to the betterment of its members. There are those relativists who believe that although relativism is not based in absolute values, each person living within a social framework should obey the laws and culture that the society deems proper. Polygamy, for example, is neither right nor wrong in itself. It’s simply that some societies have a history and culture of allowing polygamous relationships and others have a history of promoting monogamous relationships. Neither is really right or wrong- They just have different cultures and each should be allowed to express their preference. They believe that morality is determined by the dictates of the society.
Relativist claim: “Each society does what is right for them and we should allow them to practice the dictates of their own culture and habits”
This is a type of cultural relativism is known as Normative relativism – meaning that whatever mores the society holds should be followed. But what about those people to rally for social change? Slavery was once the majority view in the South, so should it have therefore been left in place? If a society agrees that a practice such as slavery or infanticide is acceptable, then one cannot say abolishing those practices is the right thing to do. In fact, our society today is not better than the slave-holding south, it’s just different. Relativism without a solid foundation of objective standards quickly sinks into a quicksand of moral meaninglessness where no laws or moral frame work is better than any other.
It gets worse, though. If morality means agreeing with whatever the society says is OK right now, then anyone who stands up to those concepts would be considered immoral since they are fighting against the majority opinion. It makes those that would push for the rights of the downtrodden to be immoral! The abolitionist movement and Dr. Martin Luther King’s civil rights protests would be categorized as immoral actions. Concepts of justice are nullified. The idea of fair laws and unfair laws disappears. If there is no absolutes to stand upon, if everything is viewed by what society says is right right now, then fighting for improving things doesn’t make any sense.
C.S. Lewis said “A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.”1 If you think about it, this is a very profound statement. There is only one way to create a straight line, you find the shortest distance between two points. However, there are many ways to be crooked: a line can have many angles, a soft arc or deviate just slightly from the intended target. Crooked lines come in all kinds of shapes, but the only thing that defines a crooked line as crooked is it is not the shortest distance between two points; it is not straight. That’s how morality works. We need to know what the objective is in order to see what deviates from it. Both individually with good and evil and as a society, an objective morality is necessary for the world to function. Otherwise we’re all slowly being pulled down by the weight of various opinions. The more people struggle to hold onto this view, the faster they sink into meaninglessness.
References
1. Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. (New York:Macmillan Pub. Co., 1960) 45.
Labels: apologetics, culture, existence of God, moral relativism, morality
The Christian presumes their God is the one, true God and that their Bible is the one, true standard of morality. They accept these claims by faith and then proceed to judge everyone else according to these presuppositions. Which is what C.S. Lewis does. Why accept the Christian claim and not the Muslim/Jewish/Buddhist claim? Why does the Christian God get preferred status?
Now, if the Christian God and the Christian Bible is the source of morality we should expect all Christians to have the same moral and ethical beliefs. But, they don’t. No two Christians have the same moral and ethical beliefs. Christian morality then is every bit as relativistic as non-Christian morality.
Every human being is born as an amoral atheist. Morality and a belief in a God is taught and learned through family, culture, and peers. (and other things) When these things are viewed from a sociological perspective, it is clear that morality is relative to where a person lives and who their family is. All morality then is relative.
America is a nation of laws. Our Constitution begins with WE the people. WE decide what our laws will be and those laws change over time. At one time we thought slavery was OK and we found Biblical support for this view. Now we know that slavery is wrong and that the Bible is wrong on the slavery issue. Our laws will continue to change as our society changes. Our view of homosexuality is a prime example of this. Over the course of 20 years, there has been a fundamental shift in America over homosexuality. Now we see state after state approving same-sex marriage and we are hopefully coming to the place where gays will have the same civil rights and the same equal protection under the law as heterosexuals. The goal should always be fairness and justice. When our laws are unfair and unjust they need to be changed. Christians have a problem with this because it is implied that the Bible is unfair and unjust. I don’t imply it at all
I flat out say that the Bible can be unfair and unjust in its moral and ethical pronouncements.
There are many good teachings in the Bible, but there are also many bad teachings that must be rejected by people who care about a fair and just society. Only those who think the Bible is THE moral standard have a problem with this kind of thinking.
My main question is where does the concept of fair,good, come from. I am a big fan of CS Lewis Mere Christianity & God in the Dock I like. It seems to me the perspective of atheists seems to be this universe and what we call time space and matter is one colossal accident. The complexity of every thing leads me to my theism. The narrative of the Bible is what led me to being a Christian and for some people it is simply not enough for myself it was enough. We are after all free moral agents and we are responsible for our beliefs.i have investigated other religions and they didn’t seem to me to satisfy my perception of the world that we live in. I hope this makes sense. Christianity just seems to make sense to me my efforts to evangelize would be similar to the actions of those of someone warning others that the bridge is out please turn around,but you are right when believers spout out and ridicule nonbelievers they are absolutely not exhibiting Christian behavior.
Complexity indeed exists. However, why should complexity naturally lead to the Christian God? Why not the deists God or any other of the gods in the panoply of gods?
For that matter, perhaps complexity reveals we are the creation of an alien race.
As an atheist, I can readily see how a person can look at the natural world and conclude a God created or set things in motion. However, I can not see why it should be the Christian God. Especially the Evangelical Christian God whose creative acts recorded in Gen 1-3 are at odds with most everything we know about the natural world.
I do believe that no one should be discriminated against but marriage seems to be a religious construct. We could just have a civil contract that is given between 2 individuals that would be exclusive and only able to be entered into by couples and marriage would be merely ceremonial in nature. This is a little out there but could work.
Marriage is a social construct. When two people get married they get a license from the state. The minister acts as an agent for the state when he performs a wedding. The state regulates marriage. Certainly religions are free not to marry certain people but their peculiar beliefs should not be permitted to keep people from getting a state license to marry. People with no religious beliefs can have someone like me do their wedding. No religion is harmed if I do the wedding, even it is a same-sex marriage.
I understand that it’s a social contract originating out of religion so keep it religious and then any couple can go to the state and get a civil union contract gay or straight their civil union would be separate from a ceremony with religious origins. I hope I am being clear here discrimination should not be tolerated under our constitution. Instead of a marriage certificate all and exclusively couples would receive a civil union certificate from the state after all it is just a piece of paper. I am just trying to shut both sides up it has become a cause of argument that is really not worthy of the amount of attention we are giving it from my point of view. The discrimination should be addressed and corrected immediately.
I am all for the state license and the religious ceremony being separated.