No it wasn’t directed at you but at survinga who thinks we are all triggered by the notion that faith is not a choice.
General comment: I have no reason to believe anything without evidence, but the evidence against the truth of modern Christianity seems substantial when you learn about the Bible in its actual historical and cultural context. Setting aside the contradictions within the Bible on really important points like how salvation is actually achieved, key tenets have changed dramatically over the centuries and I don’t think Jesus would recognize it at all were he to walk the earth again. Furthermore it adopted some pagan ideas about the afterlife and souls and such, all of which is to say, there’s no reason to believe in it as opposed to one of the other 3,000 religions, or even as opposed to how it was most likely understood in Jesus’ time.
I can’t, having learned all this, turn back the clock and believe something other than what I believe now. I have too much information showing that it’s just another religion. I also have a clearer sense of how and why its central tenets are opposed to my worldview, so I know that it directly contradicts my values of mercy, compassion, justice, autonomy and so on. It would be quite frankly asinine for me to take a “leap of faith” in that context, and nobody can reasonably be expected to do so.
I was raised in a fairly high-demand religion. I chose to try to believe. I chose to present myself as a believer. I chose to follow the rules. I chose to avoid asking the tough questions that might destroy my faith.
Until one day, I chose to finally re-evaluate what I actually believe. Turns out, deep down, I don’t believe.
Then I had a new choice to make. I could choose to hide my disbelief, or I could choose to be honest. If there were a third option, to choose to actually believe, I would absolutely have taken that option.
But there’s no way for me to choose, deliberately, to believe something that is contrary to my experience and evidence. I could choose to take up Pascal’s wager and repent and return to the religion and present myself as a believer again, but I can’t choose to believe. I must be a disbeliever until I encounter some experience or evidence that causes me to believe.
Nope. I was indoctrinated in a religion which considers Christianity as untrue. I might believe if there was sufficient evidence, but there sure hasn’t been any I’ve seen.
I was also indoctrinated to believe in God, and I stopped the moment I stumbled on evidence of when the Bible was written. Many former fundamentalist Christians seem to have stopped believing when they fully examined the Bible, history and science. It is no accident that fundamentalists want to protect children from learning about evolution, say in an honest way.
When I debate creationists one of the first things I say it to ask them to read a real science book. If any of them ever have, I’m not aware of it.
BTW your reason for believing is a classic god of the gaps argument. We don’t understand how the universe came to be, therefore god. But why not a grad student in a universe creating class in some other brane? Why not one of countless explanations, some of them reasonably scientific? Have you investigated the latest in cosmology? Or are you letting your culture decide for you?
There seems to be a bit of difference between what is taught in Seminary, and what is then passed on through the pulpit to the people. There is a rather long video (1’ 25") that compares what is taught from the Bible to what historical records (and actual parts of the Bible) actually say. When you get the time, and if you are interested, check out SATAN’S GUIDE TO THE BIBLE (youtube.com)
As I said to my husband last night, “I’m beginning to realize many Christians don’t really believe in the Bible. They believe about the Bible.”
For me it’s been so fascinating realizing what I took for granted as true because fellow Christians told me what the Bible meant when it said X. But I think it makes a lot more sense to see what Biblical scholars are saying about the historical and cultural context and the possible meanings and decide what it all means based on the facts that we do have.
For one thing I learned a lot about ancient Judaism that I never knew. How can you hope to understand the New Testament if you don’t even understand the meaning of the Old one?
What evidence it would take to get me to believe in a god would largely depend on what god I was being asked to believe in.
For Christianity, I would need some strong visitation event with demonstrated miracles of tangible, lasting results. It would also take a serious conversation, and not in the form of Job, where God starts yelling at him, “Who are you to question me?” I’m talking a real conversation about the nature of the world, why things are the way they are, and why he seems so absent from the world.
Then I’d still want to know why I should worship him. I mean, just the situation with Job doesn’t leave me with much confidence in his morality, nevermind all the stuff in Psalms about dashing in the heads of the infants of the enemies and rejoicing.
Then again, if vampires suddenly showed up, and one could be safe in Christian church, and holy water was demonstrated as an effective weapon, i might give belief a little more credence.
Yes, the God of gaps…Or as I’ve seen the argument put, “The Big Bang needs a Big Banger. The Bang can’t bang itself.”…Something incredibly powerful, and outside of our normal space/time continuum.
There’s a moral argument, too. But I don’t necessarily find that as compelling for just a basic argument for any God.
The Gap argument doesn’t address my specific view on the “God of the Bible”. That comes from Jesus & the gospels and such. But the Gap gets me to “there is a God”.
Eh, well I took some religion classes in college. So, I studied Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Shinto, etc. But that was an 8:00 class, and I was usually hung over…I think I got a “B”.
Within Christianity, I looked a little bit at Catholicism, Southern Baptist, and Disciples of Christ. Some of that was driven by the girls I was dating at various times. I dated a few Catholics back when I was a young guy. One of my girlfriends was Jewish, but she wasn’t practicing.
You have said that with some religions you took a class and with others people you dated took you to their religious institutions, and yet with none of those did you just suddenly decide to join any of those. It was only when you did an in depth study of a particular sect that you gradually come to a decision that Methodism was the path for you.
Do you now see why others might feel a bit offended when you tell them that all they have to do is decide to believe in a god, easy peasey… especially when you tell us that you yourself didn’t do it that way?
My beliefs aren’t choices. I really don’t understand how you can think that your beliefs are a choice. You can choose to study religions, you can choose to follow a path towards belief, but the belief itself isn’t a choice. Could you choose to no longer believe?
I say this because I can’t imagine believing in any of that stuff, and I couldn’t choose my way to believing it. I can choose between Coke or Pepsi, but I can’t choose to believe in a deity.
John 3:16 says: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
This implies that not everyone will believe in Jesus. Some of us will. And to do that, we have to make the choice to believe. We are free to make that choice to believe. But we don’t have to make it.
