It’s not just the Church; it’s the Bible too

If you’ve ever heard a Christian talking with an ex-Christian they don’t know who has recently lost the faith, you’ve heard the believer say something like this: “I’m sorry you had a bad experience with that church. They really weren’t showing you the love of Christ at all. I know Jesus, and he’s about love. He would never approve of (insert odious thing the church was doing).”

I’ve been surprised to realize recently that I no longer believe this. A big part of the problem I have with faith doesn’t seem to be with the church. It is with the Bible itself.

It’s the opposite of what I always heard as a Christian. All my life I believed the Bible was the holy, inspired Word of God. Churches try their best, but they are full of fallible people. They make mistakes. They are hypocritical. There are false prophets and false witnesses.

The church people may let you down, but the Word of God will not; it is a solid rock.

How to be a Christian

I’ve noticed that some Evangelical Christians have a very specific list of things you must do in order to be saved. But they are also the people who would deny most vehemently that Christianity is a list of things to do. It’s grace from Jesus, they say. Nothing we can do ourselves.

“So you see, it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship! All you have to do is pray the sinner’s prayer, and believe in Jesus in your heart, and follow him and you’ll be saved!”

“Great! Sounds simple enough. I was afraid you would have a list of rules for me to follow or something.”

“No, nothing like that! Well, that’s great you’re saved now. See you on Sunday at church!”

What’s a Physeter? A post about metaphors and prophecy

This is a post about finding meaning. Also crossposted at thephyseter.wordpress.com.

Why do I call myself The Physeter online? My internet moniker is the name of a beautiful and majestic creature:

The sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), or cachalot, is the largest of the toothed whales and the largest toothed predator. It is the only living member of genus Physeter, and one of three extant species in the sperm whale family, along with the pygmy sperm whale and dwarf sperm whale of the genus Kogia.

Gay is illegal in Africa

38 countries outlaw consensual same-sex acts

Abraham Sacrifices Isaac: What it teaches Christians today

My previous post made an example of why the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac has so many problems. I’d like to share how this story haunted me personally while growing up Christian.

In Genesis 22, God demands that Abraham sacrifice his son, Isaac, to test Abraham’s obedience. Abraham is blessed for doing whatever God says, no matter how hard it was for him.

This surely tells us something about God’s character. A Christian believes that the Bible is the inspired word of God, and everything in it is meant to teach us something, to help us grow in Christ. I can nearly type this verse from memory: “All scripture is God-breathed, and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (1 Tim. 3:16-17). So the story of Abraham’s sacrifice must be important.

Because of this, I thought God would speak to me and tell me to do something, and I would have to obey unquestioningly. I had no guarantee that what he told me would be reasonable. An unreasonable demand could be a test, and must be followed like a reasonable one. But how do you know if you are hearing from God?

Abraham Sacrifices Isaac: Not how modern Christian think

Here, let me tell you two stories, and see which one you think has the better moral.

A poor man has been looking a long time for a job, and finally gets one. After a time the boss tells him he’s thinking of promoting him to a supervisory position with a big pay increase. But the poor man will have to look the other way while the boss does some cooking of the books. The poor man really needs this raise. And, he’s afraid that if he says no, the boss will find some excuse to fire him, leaving him with no job to feed his family. But after praying and thinking it over, the poor man says, “I’m sorry, but I can’t lie for you, because it’s wrong.” The boss then gives him the bigger job, because it was a test to see if he was honest. The boss didn’t want to hire a person who would lie to get ahead.

Second story: exactly the same as the first. The poor man is offered a bigger job if he’ll just lie about this one little thing. The poor man thinks it over and replies, “I trust you, boss, and I know you wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t have good reason. So I’ll lie for you if you want.” The boss gives him the job, because he wanted to make sure his worker would do what was required.

So…in which situation did the worker do the right thing?

Blogs from Think Atheist

I planned to start blogging both here and at thinkatheist.com. Instead, I have only blogged at think atheist. I plan to start moving those posts over to this site as well, so people can read them and comment on them even if they don’t want to create a thinkatheist account. That blog can be viewed here.

Why I am an atheist

I am not an atheist. Or at least, not yet. I’m not sure. I am growing, and trying to learn about what is true.

I am a recent college grad. I studied physics and minored in writing. I spent some time in 2010 on a mission trip to a remote village in Africa, in part because I wanted to strengthen my faith, and it seemed to work at first. I saw God working there in new ways, and I learned a lot about seeking God, seeing God, and trusting in God. While surrounded by other missionaries and cut off from much of the rest of the world, I was absolutely convinced that I had found the right way to live. Even though I didn’t agree with everything the mission organization believed, I did think I’d found a true faith in God.

But when I came back from missions, I came back to my old life. I started reading the news online again, and I ended up running across atheist blogs. I found that I could relate to those experiences—I seemed to have more in common with the former Christian who left the faith than with Christian apologists. I found that atheist arguments made more sense and were much less refutable than Christian apologetics. Worse, I began to see that some of the problems we’d had on the mission field could be better explained by assuming there was no god.

I had never seen hard evidence that there is no God. But in all my time in remote Africa, giving my all and wholly devoting myself to God, I had never seen anything that would have happened differently if there was no god. No unexplained miracles, no prophesies or revelations, nothing at all without a material explanation.

There are many reasons I would call myself an atheist. I will try to list the biggest ones, and in the future write more regarding each topic.

A big issue is the disconnect between what the Bible says and what I see in the real world, specifically in two areas. One, the Bible says that miracles will occur when you pray to Jesus. We don’t see miraculous healings; we see normal medical procedures and a random distribution of unexplained recovery.

Two, the Bible claims to be the source of truth and morality, but many who study the Bible and call themselves Christian do not turn out to be good people. Good and bad people seem to occur in Christianity and in Islam, and in every other sect. Christianity also doesn’t seem to grant happiness more consistently than any other worldview.

Reason number three: in spite of all my genuine faith and my experience overseas, I’ve never seen evidence of God. Since evolution and modern science have given a plausible answer as to how the world could exist without god, the burden of proof is now on the theists, not the atheists.

Four, how people are treated by the Christians, particularly homosexuals. The Bible is very clear that homosexuality is a sin, but modern experience seems to suggest more and more that gay people are just born that way. Also, so many ‘spirit-filled’ Christians insist that you can’t believe in Jesus and still believe in evolution.

Five, Christians say that doubt is normal, and that one must have faith to get through it. You hear all the time about Christians questioning their faith. If what we have is a gift from a loving God and the only way to be saved, wouldn’t you expect more people to be sure

Why Blog?

I made my first post to an atheist website here a couple weeks ago, and it scared me.

I got a great, encouraging response. But it also made my potential atheism really real to me. For a long time I’ve been thinking atheist, but acting Christian. Saying out loud, even anonymously, that I don’t believe in god is kind of a big step.

Reading other people’s blogs and forum posts has been very helpful for me, but not as meaningful as speaking my own mind.

I have lots of reasons not to blog. For one thing, are my ideas really that interesting or original that someone would want to read them? For another thing, what if too many people want to read them, and my comments are full of arguing? Plus, I’m shy, and it can be painful to share something this personal about myself. Part of me worries that my atheism is just a ‘phase,’ and I’d be better off going back to church. And I still have this irrational fear that people will find out who I am in real life and use that to hurt me somehow (though I couldn’t explain how).

I will blog anyway, though. Everyone needs a support group, and when you are exploring new possibilities in faith, you need people with a new perspective. I don’t know people in real life who I think could help me on this road, so I need to look elsewhere.

So I’ll be blogging, here and on thephyseter.wordpress.com/. I’ll post some thoughts on why I’m an atheist and why I’m not an atheist. I’ll spell out some of my problems with the church and some problems with the book I’m reading now,“Godless” by Dan Baker. I may even share some Atheist Parables I wrote a year ago as I began to explore my doubts.

Thanks to those who have talked with me so far on my intro post, and encouraged me to keep moving forward.

First try

This is the first post on my new blog. I’ll update it later to say something more interesting.

Hi everybody!