A regular reader of this blog sent me an email and asked the following:
I am unsettled by the notion that there is a possibility that the bizarre God of fundamentalism might exist. The idea that YHWH exists as described by Dan Corner, Jack Chick and their ilk terrifies me. Because that means we are dealing with a being that is irrational, uncaring, inconsistent, and quite frankly confusing in every aspect. It is that particular aspect of Christianity that I fear being true.
This person is “almost” sure that there is no God, but his need for certainty continues to plague him. I am sure that many readers can attest to having similar feelings at one point in time in their journey out of Evangelical Christianity. What this person continues to struggle with is doubt and fear. What if the fiery God of Jonathan Edwards really is as advertised? What if countless bellowing Evangelical preachers are right about God, sin, judgment, and the afterlife? Surely, there’s some test that we use to prove once and for all whether this God is the one true God. Surely, in this day of modern science, we have some sort of test we can use to finally and authoritatively rule out the existence of the Evangelical God. Unfortunately, the best that science can do is tell us that Evangelical interpretations of Genesis 1-3 are false; that the universe was not created in six literal twenty-four-hour days; that the earth is not 6,026 years old (as of February 22, 2023). These facts do, however, warn us about how Evangelicals interpret the Bible; that their Fundamentalist literalism, hermeneutics, and presuppositions don’t stand the smell test. And if Evangelical interpretations are false on these fundamental issues, what’s to say that their concept of God is not also without merit? The question we must ask here, then, is the one asked by Satan, the walking snake: yea hath God said? Is the Bible a supernatural text? Is it divinely inspired and inerrant? Settling these issues will go a long way in burying Jesus in the sands of Palestine. That said, concluding that the Bible is NOT what Evangelicals claim it is, and that its words were written by humans, will not erase all doubt one might have about the existence of God. Answering these questions will get a person almost to home, but there could still be, as in the case of the person who emailed me, niggling doubts.
These doubts are the vestiges of Evangelical conditioning and indoctrination. Sunday after Sunday, these “truths” were preached from the pulpits of the churches we attended. Spend enough years hearing such sermons, and you are going to think these beliefs are true. The essence of faith is believing without seeing. Evangelicals believe in God, Heaven, Hell, and the afterlife, not because they have ever seen them, but because their churches, pastors, and families believe them to be true. Surely, all these people can’t be wrong, right? Actually, they can be (and are) wrong. Faith, for the most part, bypasses reason and intellectual inquiry. Evangelicals believe what they do because everyone they know believes the same. It is only when Evangelicals step outside of the Evangelical box that they see their resolute beliefs are not as solid as they think they are. (Please see The Danger of Being in a Box and Why it Makes Sense When You are in it and What I Found When I Left the Box.)
I cannot, for the letter writer, tell him what to believe. He must walk his own path and come to his own conclusions. The doubts he still battles are emotional in nature. Telling him to read yet another book will not drive away the fear and doubt that afflict him. His immersion in Evangelicalism has left deep scars that might take a long time to overcome. All any of us can do when it comes to religion is ask ourselves, how probable is it that Evangelical beliefs are true? What evidence is there for their truthfulness? It is “possible” that a commercial jet flying over my house could lose one of its engines, and that engine would fall on my house and kill me. Possible? Sure. Probable? No! I don’t go around worrying about a jet engine falling on my head. That would be stupid. I am confident — 99.99999999 percent confident — that I will live out my entire life without a jet engine falling from the sky and killing me. With all the things that could kill me, it is irrational and a waste of time to worry about falling engines.
So it is with the Evangelical concept of God. I am confident that the Evangelical God is not who and what Christians claim he is. Reason, skepticism, and intellectual inquiry have led me to conclude that the Evangelical God is a fictional being, not one I need worry about lest he rain fire and brimstone down on my head. The odds are such that I don’t worry one whit about this God’s existence. If I was going to “worry” about the existence of a Creator God, I would mentally afflict myself wondering whether the deistic God exists. But why worry? This God is unapproachable and unknowable. All any of us can do is LIVE! It is primarily the Abrahamic God that keeps many people up at night with his threats of judgment and Hell.
Surely, if the Evangelical God is real he would help the letter writer with his doubts. He is slipping away, Lord. Do something! Of course, God is silent. Why? He is a fiction of the human mind. Once this fact becomes rooted in your mind — and it might take years — gone are doubts about this God’s existence.
Well, Bruce, what if you are wrong and you die, only to find out God is real? All I know to do is to say to God: My bad, Jesus! I am 99.99999999 percent sure that is one apology I will never have to deliver. Could I be wrong? It’s possible — as in .00000001 percent possible, but I don’t plan on wasting my time on things for which there is no evidence.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Connect with me on social media:
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
This is intended as a response to the regular reader who raised this question.
I don’t know whether or not there is a god. As far as I can tell, this is unknowable. Whether the God of fundamentalism exists, also seems unknowable. That’s why I say that I am agnostic.
Although I lack knowledge, and therefor lack certainty on the God question, I do not have any doubts. The reason that I don’t have any doubts, is that I have decided that it does not matter to me whether there is a god. So I live my life as best I can, without any concerns about the god question.
And here is the pernicious nature of this type of religion. Those of us who are indoctrinated as children may reason our way out but there will always be the emotional residue of that early indoctrination. As much as I try to reason my way out of any type of irrational thought I am not always completely successful. I was exposed to and threatened by religious dogma every day of my childhood so I can’t expect that I will ever be fully free even though I know it’s complete nonsense
Ah yes! The residuals…. I feel like I want to apply a regular jot of uncertainty into my heart whenever I suffer that residual damage and want to react. I am wholly uncertain of the existence of God(s) but certain that the questions I have for that nonentity remain in my life. That alone is enough to convince some believerfs that I am indeed a believer too. In the same magical fashion, people come and go here telling Bruce that he is still a believer no matter what he says. Religion was a poison excreted from the natural spirit of humankind. Religion poisons, taints all it touches.
Many of us have residuals from earlier training. I, for instance, was trained to keep short accounts with God. If I did something I regretted, I was taught to quickly say, “God, I am sorry.” I still do that without thinking. And then I ask myself, “Who did I just now think I was talking to?”
Luckily for me my parents did not push any absolute religion on us kids. Thru my life I have come to see religions as a social conditioning to control people. The most absolute are the worst (evangelical, calvinist, catholic, ultra-orthodox Jews, Islam in Iran and Afghanastan). They have the only correct religion and may destroy anyone who disagrees. Like the House Un-American Activities Committee destroyed many people like Angela Davis, Dashiell Hammett, and blacklisted many musicians in the 1960s.
I am not afraid of retribution from Allah, or Thor, or Ganesh, or any other plethora of deities that civilizations and cultures revere or have ever revered. I was indoctrinated to fear a version of the evangelical deity, but I no linger fear it either. While I do not and cannot be sure that any deity or deities exist, I think the likelihood is remote that one or more will somehow change me postmortem into a being that can be physically and consciously tortured for eternity. When I think of all this rationally without the ingrained fear indoctrinated into me, it doesn’t bother me anymore.
From another perspective, what if a God exists who loves intellectual honesty? If such a God exists, then Evangelical Christians who dishonestly claim, for political reasons, to know things while internally realizing the hypocrisy of their position, will find themselves on the wrong side of that God. If I must place a wager on a God existing, then I suppose a God who loves intellectual honesty is more likely than one who demands mindless adherence to a contradictory ancient book.