Another One Gets Off the Evangelical Bus: Thoughts on A De-Conversion
June 1, 2009 by iMonk
BeAttitude gives his reasons for Why He Walked Away From Christianity. Don’t skip this. Read it carefully and don’t start talking. Just listen.
1. I always want to commend anyone who moves to a position of authenticity for themselves. If you don’t believe the claims of your own Christian community, then by all means please move to a position where you are able to say “This is what I do believe.” What you don’t believe is a step along the way. We’ve got thousands of Christians who are actually unbelievers, agnostics and atheists. We’d all be better off to ring a bell and go to our real position. Even if it makes mom and dad cry, which it will.
2. The hand of the new atheists is heavily apparent here. If you don’t believe their assault on the Christian faith and religion in general are making an impact, you’re out to lunch. Their arguments may be weak and answerable, but they are persuasive to millions of ordinary people. Most Christians won’t be professional apologists and they aren’t coming to your seminar or class. For many people, a Chris Hitchens or a Sam Harris are devastatingly confident voices of self-proclaimed reason. Investigation may prove otherwise, but that’s hardly well-publicized or well communicated.
3. The hand of shallow evangelical thinking is just as apparent. Does this read like Bart Ehrman’s discovery that inerrancy wasn’t true? Yes, and I say where are the evangelicals with the courage- and that’s what it will take- to say that simplistic inerrancy isn’t the default Christian position? Where is the awareness that the vast majority of the Christian world isn’t playing by the rules of a minority segment of evangelicalism determined to make their ideas of inerrancy the definition of Christianity. Read the Catholic Catechism on the inspiration of scripture, for goodness sake. Find out why you don’t have to have your faith detonated like Ehrman did, by a bomb that was defused long, long ago.
4. Once the content of the Old Testament is out there folks. you better have some answers and some honesty. Here’s a violent, bloody book of sacrifice and war, much of it endorsed by God. Books like Christopher Wright’s The God I Don’t Understand aren’t going to sell many copies among today’s Christians, so very few Christian young people will ever hear someone really wrestling with these questions. It’s not an easy problem, and anyone who concludes that atheism is more moral than a God who orders up violence and destruction shouldn’t be ridiculed. But as Razi Zacharias has pointed out over and over, atheists like BeAttitude are engaging in a moral argument that atheism itself undercuts. The believer in God has a problem with what God does. The atheist has a problem with the fact he/she has a problem. So after we’ve all vented, we actually come back to a common problem: can we trust our own moral instincts completely to give us all of the truth?
5. BeAttitude has discovered that Christianity- and theism in general- is extremely unlikely. The problem with so many preachers and teachers is they speak constantly as if Christianity is so obvious, so apparent, so easy, so plain, so likely to be true that only morons are unbelievers. Wrong. I once had a preacher at our ministry who would say you were stupid to not believe in God or the Bible. Now the Bible says the fool says in his heart that there is no God, and I believe that….from inside the faith. But from outside of it, it’s very unlikely that miracles happen, that dead men rise, that God speaks, etc. It’s totally unlikely. But as C.S. Lewis says, so are noses. So is everything else. You have to move past that, and if you have been in an environment where all of your questions were placed in the category of “what stupid, foolish and unbelieving people say,” then you kept quiet, and now, like BeAttitude, the whole business seems completely outrageous. Well…it is. And the Psalms bear witness to that as does the rest of scripture. You have to be in that place a bit and to consider that the biggest claim Christianity makes isn’t that God parted the Red Sea, but that there is a reason there is something rather than nothing.
6. BeAttitude is now free to say that Christians have terrible flaws and have done terrible things. What does that tell you about the kind of Christianity we’ve fostered? That’s right….we blame our critics. We deny our history. We explain away our bloody and oppressive actions. We act as if being a Christian- on the large and small stages- must entail a loyalty oath to defend the indefensible. This is, of course, bizarrely ironic given the fact that we are the one religion that openly proclaims we are so bad we can’t do anything to help ourselves.
7. The doctrine of hell needs a lot of work in how we present it. (See C.S. Lewis for details.) Again, bad evangelicalism rings through statements about 70% of the world going to hell for refusing to believe Jesus is God. There’s a big conversation on hell that gets silenced whenever it breaks out. The doctrine of hell becomes a pragmatic flag that has to be waved to create the requisite conditions for aisle-walking evangelism. I have to answer this objection every week. I always say the same thing: Christianity doesn’t empower Christians to tell others who is going to hell. It reveals who God is and who we are. It gives us the Gospel. It asks us the question: How are your sins forgiven? It doesn’t put you or me in the place of God in what we know about anyone. It addresses you. Not groups. Not bumper sticker theology. Your real life in relation to a particular God and what he has revealed. But BeAttitude has walked into the dilemma that Jesus is the one who delivers the Christian doctrine of hell most plainly. If you judge that Jesus isn’t to be believed on those matters, then there is NO argument about theology and NO apologetic that’s going to repair that problem.
8. Which reminds me that BeAttitude has very little to say about Jesus aside from 1) he didn’t do everything I think he should do and 2) the Gospels may be a different kind of literature than I was told. I always note that Jesus seldom leads the reasons people abandon the faith. Not faulting BeAttitude at all. I just would say Jesus is the “heaviest” factor in any consideration of Christianity. Not a minor matter. If he’s the clue from God to all these questions humans have, then he changes everything.
9. I am a Christian because I was born into that culture and family? No, as true as that is, I am a Christian because I remain one, despite the strong arguments against Christianity provided by being in a Christian family and culture.
10. Let me repeat myself. So much of what you will read here is the price tag of the typical evangelical view of the Bible as inerrant, without significant issues, never raising moral questions, always explainable, etc. If it were not for Jesus, passages like Genesis 22 would put me right where BeAttitude is now. His objections are significant and important. There is an entire discussion and level of understanding Christianity that BeAttitude hasn’t been introduced to within an increasingly shallow and doctrinally compromised evangelicalism.
Very well stated. I am a Catholic who works for an evangelical organization and I tell them that they ignore what you have to say at their considerable peril.
What passes for “apologetics” is, at best, weak sauce and, often enough, an invitation to abandon the faith like “BeAttitude.”
And don’t get me started on what I call “culture war induced distortion” or CWID for short.
Catholics are hardly immune. We have plenty of folks who go only through the motions of a religious life, including many very public examples. It terribly undermines our credibility.
Ouch a terribly painful read. But he does have an incredibly comprehensive list of reasons. He hit just about all the major ones I have heard before. Honestly, it deeply pains me that I simply do NOT have an answer for many of his reasons. I could give an answer to each and every one, but I couldn’t honestly buy all the ones I would come up with.
About the new atheists, though… I truly believe that the Dawkins and Hitchens crowd are to atheism as shallow consumeristic evangelicalism and moral therapeutic deism are to Christianity. While they may be making an impact, real atheists are very put off by their rhetoric. They rely heavily on transference of expertise and it simply isn’t putting them on the historical map of philosophical greatness. I think that after some time many new atheism followers will become disillusioned with the bitterness and skepticism that drives the movement and return for a search into spirituality once again.
A fact about faith, it doesn’t always come naturally, by itself. you have to open to it and to pursue the truth. I sat on my hands in a Church for 3 + years open to the concept of faith but not believing. Even that stage was a long way from the skeptrical instinct I learned was the natural mode of huamn inquiry and the basis for science.
It is hard to find Jesus sometimes amongst the mess of Christian ideals and evangelical certainty. Sadly many feel like BeAttitude, left with little choice in the end. And even sadder is those who continue to proclaim such a gospel of bad news.
A fact about faith, it doesn’t always come naturally, by itself. You have to open to it and to pursue the truth and then you still have to receive it as a gift. I sat on my hands in a Church for 3 + years open to the concept of faith but not believing. Even that stage was a long way from the skeptical instinct that I learned was the natural mode of human inquiry and the basis for science.
Christianity makes several wild claims: existence of God, existence of a God that cares about me personally, existence of a God that is willing to die for me, resurrection of the dead , life after death etc. None of it can be demonstrated in a scientific sense. Without faith you are truly blind and Christianity sounds as plausible as Greek myth. I’m incredibly fortunate to have been given reason to doubt my doubt and the desire to look beyond the surface. Even then it would not have been enough: faith is an indispensable unmerited gift. I could not have come to it on my own.
I agree that the influence of the new atheists is highly evident in this list. For example, he lists this item:
In the very first comment to the post, someone asks:
His response:
In other words, he admits that he has no basis from which to critique other religions, but he’s already determined those religions to be as valid as Christianity. Why has he made this determination? I’m assuming it’s because a persuasive person told him that it is so.
You don’t have to be religious to have faith, I guess.
A very sobering and humbling post. I’m going to have to chew on this one.
oops sent that first one before it’s time
I just would say Jesus is the “heaviest” factor in any consideration of Christianity.
He ain’t heavy / He’s my Brother …
The questions of BeAttitude are excellent and if we haven’t struggled with them we need to. I left the church for ten years because of a quetion. God never left me. I only returned because I got married and my husband insisted that we be members of a church. I worked most Sundays so I said fine. He can go and it will make him happy.
Soon I didn’t have the Sunday job so there I was going to church. The pastor had excellent sermons and made me start thinking about stuff again.
It was a Baptist in my neighborhood who invited me to a Bible Study that really did it though. I started asking myself if I died was I ready to meet my maker? The answer was no. I had to pray for forgiveness and ask Jesus to love me. I wasn’t sure He would. In His mercy he did and took me back as undeserving as I was. So began my Spiritual journey. Looking back I can see how God was with me every step of the way. As He is with BeAttitude.
A young man at my doctors office told me he was raised Catholic and is now an athiest. He said he even went to seminary to study for the priesthood. There he learned he had learned everything he was suppose to but didn’t believe any of it. God isn’t finished with him yet. I pray for him and will pray for BeAttitude because I know our prayers do make a difference for I have seen those miracles BeAttitude has missed.
Imonk,
In reference to faith, love and works you said:
“Jesus keeps these things together, and makes the life of a disciple very difficult at times.”
Your thought carries over into this thread in that we don’t make credible witnesses to Christianity unless are lives are demonstrably changed by Christ. WE are the evidence that atheists are weighing and in that analysis our lives are more important than our words.
…when i first read the church billboard i thought “how backwards”…..but upon second thought……….
I read Christopher Hitchens’ book “God Is Not Great” and it is a real slap in the face to all religions. I don’t agree with all of his assertions but he rips Jewish and Christian apologists to shreds in every debate I’ve seen (if you’re interested, do a Youtube search.) There is one debate in particular where he takes on three Christian apologists by himself and dominates the entire dialogue. An example of how now the atheist or “anti-theist” are now becoming the “salt” in terms of their honesty…
iMunk, I often wonder if it wasn’t necessary for me to make a complete break with religion to go from the fundamentalist teachings of my childhood to a place where I could know Christ.
I didn’t walk away from Christ because I barely knew Him. And the Christ I heard about was easily confused with Santa Clause – checking a list to see if I was naughty or nice. I walked away from religious interpretation.
I notice that many atheist arguments assume a fundamentalist view of scripture. If the disagreements are about religious interpretation, as they usually are, I can’t blame them from walking away. How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? …faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.
At too many churches the message is too cluttered to sift out a word of Christ.
Christians don’t need some new theory or gimmick. We need to get back to the basics of the word of Christ.
This is pretty personal to me. I have a friend who left the faith about 6-7 years ago. He became very angry at both Christianity and Christians. I hadn’t spoken to him since he left the church (he actually hung up on Christian friends who attempted to contact him). Then a few months ago I re-connected with him on Facebook… He also re-connected with many of his Christian friends and decided to post a note as to why he left the faith (similar to BeAttitude).
Much of his reasons were the same. He said he was convinced by atheists like Dawkins, and Bible criticism by people like Pagels. Much of his reasoning though came off as “newly enlightened” as if these issues he brought up were completely unknown to Christians — though perhaps they are to many.
I wrote him a couple times suggesting that he never read the counterpoints. That he appeared to have let Dawkins convince him without ever reading William Craig. Or that he let Pagels convince him without ever reading NT Wright.
But you know what. I struggle myself. I’m very aware of apologetics. I’ve read WL Craig, Blomberg, Geisler, Moreland, etc and I still struggle.
The biggest assault to my faith though — is Biblical criticism. If I can’t rely on the Bible as true, then what do I have.
And like iMonk, I bring it all back to Jesus. If Jesus rose from the dead, then all my skepticism is moot.
Rich,
I disagree. The Hitchens/Craig debate at Biola was a complete embarassment. Craig destroyed Hitchens.
Here ya go team:
I believe in the inspiration of scripture.
But if the Bible were NOT inspired, but accurate, I would be a Christian.
Kenny J: I think Douglas Wilson makes a fine showing. No demolition, but toe to toe.
“But as Razi Zacharias has pointed out over and over, atheists like BeAttitude are engaging in a moral argument that atheism itself undercuts. The believer in God has a problem with what God does. The atheist has a problem with the fact he/she has a problem.”
I’m not sure i understand this.
I love this blog. Great questions, Michael.
How did Jesus answer his skeptics? He just stated what He saw the Father doing. He demonstrated it. Some believed. Some didn’t. He didn’t condemn anyone but they were their own judges. Jesus had compassion on the multitudes but He did not seem to be overly concerned with stating their demise. His ire was turned toward the religious people who were giving a false view of who God was. Sometimes we learn as much about Jesus from what He doesn’t say as from what He says. What does Jesus NOT address regarding this that we would have liked Him to? That can be a starting place to understanding how we deal with this.
I think that a lot more needs to be said about the power of the Holy Spirit in this type of discussion than ever seems to be said. That isn’t a copout.
Tim W:
Let’s use 9-11 as an example. After the attack, an atheist says “Such an outrageous and immoral act proves there is no God.”
Watch out for the trap door there, sir. If there is no God….what is the basis of your moral outrage?
Why- in an atheistic universe- are acts like 9-11 morally outrageous? That’s the language of a theistic universe. Atheists need to say, “I find this act outrageous to my chosen ideas of morality” or “Many people find this outrageous to their chosen view of morality.”
Atheists would be just as justified to say “It’s outrageous that 3000 chickens were killed today” or to say “It was an event. It has no meaning.”
The problem of evil is only a problem if there are transcendent morals, which normally come from God/gods.
ms
iMonk: I think you meant that for Rich — right? He was the one in that 4-panel discussion that Rich mentioned. I’ve seen the video and I never thought Hitchens had the upper hand, but I also think that the other 3 failed at making a compelling case (something that is unusual for Craig).
I am compelled to ask one question:
If God were in plain sight with a perfect Bible and a perfect world, would it make a difference in my faith?
I seriously doubt it.
BeAttitude said that leaving Christianity gave him relief because:
I think here we see a major failing of his former Christianity. The weight he speaks of is supposed to be the weight we’re relieved from when we come to Jesus. To me, this may have been the lynchpin of the deconversion. If that’s how his Christianity made him feel, where was Christ in his Christianity?
I understand the non-Christian not getting this point. But if a Christian doesn’t get this point, chances are we’re doing something seriously wrong in our churches.
Unlurking again for a bit-
Miguel
You’re absolutely right. Well, in the interest of full disclosure, I only paged through Hitchens book, but I did read Dawkins. They are most definitely NOT philosophers and their (unexamined) attachment to naturalism might as well be written in red ink. However, atheism/ agnosticism/ free-thinkers don’t actually rely on anybody or any book for their morals. Most of them are going to have most of the morals of the society around them. A good deal of them are going to be secular humanist (which, itself, is a hodgepodge of a bunch of moral traditions, including naturalism), but not all of them- there are nihilists, there are non-deific Buddhists, heck, there are lots that are christians, in the sense that they decide Christ knew what he was talking about and adopt his philosophies.
But the point of that is, we don’t have to apologize for Dawkins or Hitchens beliefs, because more than likely, they aren’t the beliefs of anyone else’s. The only thing we all have in common is a lack of belief in any god (or in my case, the lack of evidence to support a belief in any god). So, we don’t need to care about what Dawkins is saying about, except because that’s how people are going to view atheists (because we’re not numerous or powerful enough to be individuals yet).
Oh, and Jon S.-
I don’t really think that it’s fair to put words in his mouth. Not have “authority” on something, and not being familiar enough to recognize it’s claims come from the same place (an unverifiable holy text) are not the same things. I went to church for years; I’m much more comfortable discussing the nitpicky things in Christianity than Islam. But I still know that Islam is based on a holy text, written by a guy who is long dead, with lots of unresolved claims of authenticity, and is so open to interpretation that people use it to justify whatever they already personally believe. Just like the Bible.
i would have to look up too many words to understand what you are talking about.
Last comment (I really should have read the whole thread before commenting
.
iMonk
Surely you know the re-joiner to this one? The existence of god/gods doesn’t make the morals less relativistic. Because, then you are either defining “good” as “what god says” or “god does good”. If it’s the first, than it’s completely arbitrary; then the god-of-the-old-testament demanding slaughter and rape is 100% peachy-keen, and is in fact the highest good you could do. If it’s the second, than good exists independent of god; we don’t need it/him/her to find out what “good” is. If I’m missing an option, please tell me. I think the only thing in church I ever heard was “God is good”, which leans towards the former interpretation, but still leaves the problem of the “ordering hundreds of thousands to die” thing.
Michael is absolutely correct in his 12:43 p.m. post on atheism and morality. To elaborate a bit more, if God is simply something that humans made up, then it is also highly likely that morality is just a social construct as well. Nietzsche’s idea that the weak invented morality to control the strong would thus make sense. Moreover, if we live in a universe in which human life emerged through some random process, then life has no ultimate purpose. Morality would therefore be as much a fairy tale as God and it would be superstitious to believe in right and wrong in a universe without God.
Much of BeAttitude’s criticism for Christianity as well as much what comes from the “new atheists” is in essence a moral critique. Indeed, men such as Dawkins and Hitchens are as moralistic as any fundamentalist preacher. As far as I’m concerned, however, this is where much of the “new atheism” breaks down and becomes illogical and perhaps even emotionalistic. Nietzsche’s atheism is far more coherent and genuine than that of Dawkins or Hitchens. These “new atheists” rely on Christian concepts (especially notions of good and evil) a lot more than they would care to admit.
rr
I’ve been there. Reading not just what the Ehrmans of the world have to say, but even biblical scholars who have Christian faith, yet freely admit that the Bible is not as airtight as the average Christian thinks it is….well… that was a stark moment for me.
I think its important to think of the Bible as “true” in the sense that it is the recorded interaction of people God, sometimes from their very earthly perspective. It’s people putting into words what they believe and think about the Divine. So, it’s “true” in that sense.
We need to look at the development of the relation between God and man as culminating in Jesus…the same person who revised “an eye for an eye” and replaced it with “turn the other cheek.” The violence in the Old Testament is not necessarily a depiction of God’s divine character, but what the prophets thought was God’s divine character.
uh…..did any of that make sense?
I meant: “the recorded interaction of people with God”….forgot the “with first time through.
I am confused by the reasoning of the “new atheists.” As I see it, atheism is not the antithesis of Christianity, it is the antithesis of theism.
How can Hitchens et. al., reject a god, any god, just by arguing against the Christian God?
What if God was a mean, petty, vindictive, capricious, arbitrary God, like the Greek gods? Does that make him/her any less God? Who said a god has to be personal, fair or all loving?
If I were to try to move someone from atheism to Christianity, I would do so by way of theism first. And the reverse is true as well. To jump all the way to atheism from Christianity is to skip a lot of logical intermediate philosophical steps.
terri,
I’m aware of that position, but I find that just a troubling as strict fundamentalism. I’m more comfortable not understanding God’s character (as to why he commanded slaughter) than I am with the idea that God’s prophets were wrong.
Besides, I think Christopher Wright makes a good point in his book: The God I Don’t Understand. No one ever corrects the position that God commanded and willed this violence. Not even Jesus.
God was in plain sight as a pillar of smoke by day to the Isrealites. It didn’t seem to matter when crafting the golden calf. The fact that you and I can draw a breath is proof there is a diety. Ten commandments written on stone. Noah getting drunk after God saving him from the flood. Adam and Eve even walked with God in the Garden.
Literal or poetic the stories prove over and over again if God jumped out and bit us we would run and not believe. Christianity is a ridiculous story. Born of a virgin-Yeah ha ha. Feed 5000 men lunch-right!Heal the blind-how? Raise from the dead-when you are dead -you are dead. None of us believe this because it makes sense. We are convicted by the Holy Spirit.
iMonk
Finally, a couple of posts above, you actually begin dealing with the issue of sin. It’s almost completely absent from the whole beAttitude thing.
I’m a sinner saved by Grace. Everything in his 20 item list is irrelevant until he deals with this. He never mentions it. I know my sin. I know what bondage is. The atheists claim there is no bondage to sin. It’s just a bunch of false guilt and psychology. Oh well, it’s the same old story. “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
Having read Christopher Wright’s “The God I Don’t Understand” when you recommended it not long ago, I have a much better understanding of what a sovereign God is. There is a movement and plan of God throughout human history, more comprehensive than my former knowledge that some Old Testament verses were presaging the messiah. And on a personal level, I know that when I knell I do so because He is indeed the Most High. But these few words do not do justice to his book.
Questions are important. We need someone who is willing to grapple with our ideas.
Antigone,
The third option, one that sidesteps the Euthyphro problem, is that “God IS the Good”. The Good is God’s nature, and He is inseparable from it. Peter Kreeft discusses the matter in a number of places. Here’s Google Books link to the entry in the _Handbook of Christian_ apologetics:
http://books.google.com/books?id=1DH1ZPyyTkIC&pg=PA76&lpg=PA76&dq=kreeft+euthyphro&source=bl&ots=Vtv7sAUHWE&sig=Wmte91n9iZJW6i2CmeoutQoAvms&hl=en&ei=IxMkSuDECM27tweQzfHKBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4
It seems that a lot of the certainty in our apologetics in based on a belief in modernism, which then informs our belief in God. As long as the right kinds of facts are processed through rationalist epitemology, we can high-five each other that we have all the answers. But if Hitchens comes through with an opposing set of facts, then it reveals the foundations of our apologetics.
An great read, from someone who’s waded into the thick of it, is Stanley Fish’s recent column responding to his skeptical readers in the New York Times, “God Talk”.
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/god-talk-part-2/
I don’t know if I agree with that. Jesus spent a lot of time correcting the Pharisees view of God and refining how people understood the Mosaic code. He seems to think the natural default position of the religious community at that time was far off course from where God wanted them to be.
When the disciples ask Jesus to show them the Father, He responds by saying that if they had seen Jesus they had seen the Father. I wonder how that image bumped up against what the disciples thought they knew about the Father?
Jesus came forgiving, healing, extending God’s power in a much more inclusive way than the religious leadership did. They seems like night and day to me.
ugh…terrible typist “They seem like night and day to me.”
“Because, then you are either defining “good” as “what god says” or “god does good”.”
Antigone, that question has been and is being considered in Christianity (not just Christianity; wasn’t it Socrates who questioned is something good because the gods order it or do the gods order it because it is good?):
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1006.htm
“Question 6. The goodness of God
Article 3. Whether to be essentially good belongs to God alone?
Objection 1. It seems that to be essentially good does not belong to God alone. For as “one” is convertible with “being,” so is “good”; as we said above (Question 5, Article 1). But every being is one essentially, as appears from the Philosopher (Metaph. iv); therefore every being is good essentially.
Objection 2. Further, if good is what all things desire, since being itself is desired by all, then the being of each thing is its good. But everything is a being essentially; therefore every being is good essentially.
Objection 3. Further, everything is good by its own goodness. Therefore if there is anything which is not good essentially, it is necessary to say that its goodness is not its own essence. Therefore its goodness, since it is a being, must be good; and if it is good by some other goodness, the same question applies to that goodness also; therefore we must either proceed to infinity, or come to some goodness which is not good by any other goodness. Therefore the first supposition holds good. Therefore everything is good essentially.”
Those, I take it, are fundamentally the objections you mention: that is, God (or god/gods) is not necessary to originate goodness since a thing, act or being can be inherently good of itself?
ALL: I’d prefer to discuss the post or BeAttitude’s post, and not get into a typical atheist/Christian debate. Not shutting it down, but asking we not go in that direction to any great extent.
This is slightly beside the point (and long to boot), but my struggles and eventual making of peace with the question iMonk just posed was a big part of my de-conversion process, which was also very similar to BeAttitude’s.
“If there is no God….what is the basis of your moral outrage?”
Whether intelligently designed or not, we are here on this planet as sentient beings capable of free choice. We’re also highly dependant on other human beings for everything from survival to companionship to propogation of the species. ‘No man is an Island’ is more than a nice thought from one of my favorite writers, it’s a hard truth of being human. Therefore, through history we’ve formed communities, most bound together by common spiritual beliefs, to help each other grow and prosper. Up until the last 500 years or so, each of these communities were essentially separate entities that had no need to worry about the survival of the planet as a whole, assuming they even knew of a world beyond their borders. When growth or the scarcity of resources caused two cultures to bump into each other, they sometimes merged peacefully, but typically went to war to determine supremacy. In that paradigm, if your faith decrees no moral responsibilities toward the out-group (they are infidels, heretics, unclean, what have you), then you are perfectly justified in any and all actions including genocide. In this system, morals are assumed to come from above–whether the God or the Dear Leader. You follow the rules because that’s what the members of your group do. If there is no central authority telling you what your ethical code is, you are amoral. While this system generally has worked well in history and generally brings the cultural stability needed for a prosperous culture, it also can lead to well-known excesses of authoritarian dictatorships, which eventually cause the bloated structure to crumble under its own weight of dogma and hubris.
However, ever since the Rennaisance, a competing paradigm has been developing, that has reached full fruition, for better or for worse, in the 21st century. It’s a slightly paradoxical shift toward individual codes of ethics, and toward a more global understanding of community. The Rennaisance gave the world new understandings of science, art, and geography that suggested that the existing power structure didn’t really have all the answers. Martin Luther and Gutenberg launched the reformation, which lead to a similar empowerment of the individual in spiritual affairs. The Enlightenment and Industrial revolution followed, leading to the similar exhaltation of the individual in political and indutrial matters. At the dawn of the twentieth century, man had evolved beyond his petty needs for morality and superstition. Nihilism seemed to be the next logical step. God was Dead, and the old laws with him. We celebrated our victory with a triumphal voyage on the Titanic.
We all know what happened next. The old tribal battles simply went global, we kept on building better and more advanced weapons of destruction, and humanity came within an eyelash of extinction. If anything, that threat has only increased since the end of the cold war. If the 20th century teaches us nothing else, it is that we must all find some way to hang together, or we will most assuredly hang separately. That is contemporary mankind’s rationale for ethics in 2009–an honest, pragmatic assessment of the fractured state of our ‘global village’. If we do not find a way to get along, to treat our fellow humans with respect, give more to our fellow man than we take, and punish those who would seek to cause unrest and divide us as a community, then we are doomed. That’s why I help my neighbor, serve the poor, and help the uneducated gain the tools they need to transcend ignorance and social class. it’s why I give to charity. It’s also in large part why I left organized religion, and why one day, after the current strain of extremism, anti-intellectualism and materialism runs its course…I hope I might be able to come back.
The violence in the old testament is something that I really wish there was an explanation for.
Lately I’ve noticed the violent nature of the “Bible Stories” church kids hear in Sunday school and realized that hearing those violent stories all my life greatly influenced my worldview. It resulted in me looking at the U.S. as a righteous nation (like Israel) that could justly kill its enemies. I dehumanized people, but after all, didn’t Samson do the same thing or Joshua for that matter?
I think the old testament (and the associated “righteous” violence) might be a reason why Evangelicals tend to have such nationalistic and militaristic views. For example, 6 out of 10 white evangelicals support torture. (For those that aren’t members of religious organizations 20% fewer 4 out of 10 support it.)
As a believer, I think it did me a lot of good to “read” (I actually listened to it on tape during my work commute) Bart Ehrman’s book “Misquoting Jesus”. The good thing is that it divested me of some ridiculous beliefs (that were legitimately ridiculed by my non-Christian friends, which in turn reduced my credibility with them) that I realized I subconsciously held, like that the New International Version, Ryrie Study Guide Edition Bible that I’ve been studying for 25 years was somehow given to me straight from God. Of course, it was not, and I learned a whole lot more, from a historical perspective, about how Scripture was authored, transcribed, and interpreted – the actual processes – in an age when the vast majority of people were totally illiterate – such as was the case with many scribes who could copy, but who could not read.
At the end of the book, I was not convinced at all by Ehrman on his essential points; however, I accepted what I had long been moving towards: that Scripture (or at least the present-day version we have, regardless of translation) is both inspired and true, although I’m no longer willing to say “inerrant”. It’s not a hill I feel I have to die on any more, as true and inspired are enough. As a small twist to what I-Monk stated earlier, if the Bible is true, even if not inspired, it would be enough. But I believe it is both inspired and true. So there you go.
Forgive me if I am tactless here, but the list theBeAttitude gives reads like a junior high school atheism manifesto. For someone who claimed to be a Christian for 33 years, his reasonings for abandoning the faith, though honest, are frankly rather primitive.
In truth, aren’t these the kinds of questions one must wrestle with within the first three or four years of discipleship? If anything, I feel for theBeAttitide because it seems the Christians around him must have been astonishingly shallow if this is as far as his discipleship got in 33 years.
Rich W
As I understand it ( although I am sure some of the scholars {which i am not} contributing to this blog know more)Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ had to come to the earth through a people. God choose the Isrealites. Their survival as a nation had to be secured (kill the enemy). Even after being carried off into exile a remmnant had to return. To eventually produce the savior.
Instead of a nation ie Isreal, the Church, beginning at Pentecost with the coming of the Holy Spirit is for all people and all nations. Before the coming of the Messiah the Spirit spoke through the Prophets. In these days He speaks through all believers. He calls His people before they believe to come to Jesus and through Jesus to the Father.
DLE: In the evangelical world I live in, I couldn’t find 1 Christian out of 500 that would understand 5 of those objections. There is NO training in thinking in 95% of the churches I’m aware of.
I’ve been frequenting blogs that trumpet de-conversion, and I’ve seen them reference Hitchens and Dawkins less and less. I really do think their influence will fade as people begin to see their actual arguments.
But I think the problem is that people just aren’t interested in this kind of learning. How do we get people to read and stretch themselves when contemporary worship and preaching go down so smooth? And I may get accosted for this, but our newfound insistence on home-schooling and private Christian schools cloisters our kids, setting them up for this type of experience. (apologies to imonk since I think he does interact with the world at large).
I’m so interested in the subject, but I almost look at it as a pastime now. Perhaps good new evangelical scholarship will filter down in a decade or two.
BTW, are we going to see Coffee Cup Apologetics back anytime soon?
Sorry, Brad, but CCA has been one of the many prices I’ll have to pay to write a book…if ever…