Conversations Between a Christian and a Skeptic, Episode II

Why don't you believe in God?
I have no reason to.
Here's a reason: He loves you.
Well that's a nonsensical reason!
How so?
You tell me I should believe in God because he loves me. But if I'm to believe you when you tell me he loves me, I must first believe that he exists, and I have no reason to.


This conversation actually happened with a specific person. Please don't take it as representative of the views of all Christians and Skeptics.

Conversations Between a Christian and a Skeptic, Episode I

Prelude: Do you have any idea why God would be hiding from me? Why I have not found him, despite sincerely desiring to?

Seek the Lord and you will find him.
Well, I sought the Lord for quite some time and never found him. Either he doesn’t exist (which is the sneaking suspicion I finally came to), or he doesn’t want to be found.
Of course he wants to be found. Or, more accurately, he wants to find you.
Then let him find me. Here I am.
Where did you look?
Excuse me?
You said you looked for God for a while. Where did you look, when you were looking for him?
All the usual places. Nature. Scripture. The lives of people who profess belief in God. You know, the places he’s supposed to be.
And you didn’t find him in any of those places?
Nope. I used to think it was easy to see him in nature. When I was a child, thunder was God muttering. Rain was him crying. The moon was his thumbnail. As I grew older, I came to understand these to be natural phenomena, but I still believed that the existence of God best explained their existence; the stars on a winter's night were Nature singing its Creator's praises. As I continued to study, I came to understand that natural phenomena came about naturally. There is not a single instance where a natural phenomenon has turned out to have had a super natural cause. It’s either a documented natural cause, or remained unexplained.
And Scripture?
The God I believed in was completely good. There was no darkness or evil in him, and so when I found things in Scripture that went against the morality I ascribed to deity, I was at a cognitive dissonance. For many years I was successful in suppressing this dissonance, but over time I forced myself to think about it. And I did not like what I found.
The God of Scripture knows all things, and yet claims to be good. And yet he allows things to happen (and sometimes causes things to happen) that are very, very evil. And if any human had the power to stop these things and didn’t, they would be considered evil as well.
What do you mean?
Say I saw a woman getting raped. What do you think my moral obligation would be?
Where did that moral obligation come from in the first place?
Don’t change the subject. We can talk about that another time. What’s my moral obligation?
To stop it.
Exactly right. Why should I expect any less from a being who is supposed to exceed my own morality?
But the difference between you and God is that you are a finite being. God is infinite. He knows past, present, and future.
So you’re saying that if I knew the future, it might be okay, nay, even moral, for me to stand by and watch? If I knew that this woman would go on to found a women’s help line that would be a force for good in the lives of millions of women and even put a stop to millions of rapes, that this knowledge would grant me the moral authority to stand by and watch her get raped?
God doesn’t enjoy it!
I don’t care! If I were the woman, and a stranger stood by while I was violated, I wouldn’t care whether he enjoyed it or not. I don’t care if the stranger knows the good or bad that will come of this event. The fact is, he is standing by while my body is violently penetrated against my will! He does nothing while I am robbed of dignity and self-respect! What does that make the stranger!?
You know, as sad as a situation like that is, we all deserve worse. We all deserve Hell.
Do we deserve to get raped?

Your silence brings me to the third place I looked for God. People of faith. What matters is not their religion, their affiliation; the church they went to or the prayers they uttered.
 I figured, if God wants to be found, surely one of them has it right, and I should therefore see him at work in someone’s life. Especially if I’m looking for him.
And?
Nothing.
What about me?
Sorry, buddy. Besides your "orthodoxy", I see no praxis that sets you apart from people with different orthodoxies.
Did you never feel God tugging at your heart?
Oh, sure I did. It’s what the Mormons call the “burning in the bosom.” You’re not suggesting they’re the ones who’ve actually found God, are you?
No.
See, I cannot trust my own emotions to tell me if I’ve found God. I’ve had plenty of emotional experiences. At the time, I thought they were God. But it becomes so hard to sort out which are God and which are just me, feeling emotional. An encounter with God must be more than that.
What would it take to convince you?
I don’t know. I’ll let the good God I don’t believe exists handle that one.

Meaning

What is the meaning of the color yellow?

What is necessary to give meaning to yellow? Me. It's my favorite color. Because of this, it has meaning to me. Perhaps your favorite color is red. I'm happy for you.

What is the meaning of life?

What is necessary to give meaning to life? Me. It's my favorite form of existence. Because of this, it has meaning to me. Perhaps your favorite form of existence is mineralhood. I'm happy for you. Okay, maybe not.

Weird thoughts at 2:30 in the morning.

No True Scotsman

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.

1 John 2:19 ESV

In my discussions with believers, both in person and online, I have often been subtly accused (or at least the person "wondered") if I ever was actually a Christian in the first place. How frustrating to convince a former "brother in the faith" that I actually was what I said I was! That I wasn't "living a lie," but was actually a member of that faith. One of the big problems for me in trying to convince them of this are Scripture passages like the one above. The No True Scotsman fallacy is present, right here in Scripture.

I think the video I've posted below from TheraminTrees kills two birds with one stone. It exposes the faulty thinking in 1 John 2:19, and it also explains another concept I've tried to elaborate on in my conversations - that nobody actually has faith in Jesus himself. It all boils down to faith in people.

So who do we believe?

Easter Ghosts

Is it just me, or are people more into Easter this year?

I have a crummy memory sometimes, but I don't remember last year's Facebook scroll being this full of Vernal cheer and jeer. Most of my friends are full of cheer - expressing joy and gratitude to Christ for his sacrifice. A tiny number are full of jeer - posting cartoons of Zombie Jesus.

I don't feel cheer or jeer. I think about the present in its relation to the past and the future.



A year ago, I was finishing up my relationship with religion. It was a long break-up. Our Facebook status would have been "it's complicated" for about a year and a half.

Two years ago, I was having very serious doubts - questioning my Evangelical and Protestant understanding of the Christian god. I knew who the Bible purported him to be. I knew other Christians' testimonies regarding this being. I even recalled my own "experiences of the Divine." Yet these three refused to jive with reality.

Three years ago, I was a "liberalish" Evangelical Christian. By "liberalish" I mean that I didn't think homosexuality was a sin and nodded in agreement to the idea that evolution best explained the diversity of life. By Evangelical Christian, I mean that In Christ Alone was one of my favorite songs and aptly described my belief regarding Easter.



This year, I have mixed feelings. Happiness at where I am in life. Gratitude to my wife for putting up with the last three years of transition. Sadness at the pain I've caused people. Frustration at the sway mythology holds in the lives of people I love. Hope for the future.



Hope for the future. A different hope than the one I once had. That hope of the past was based on a belief in the possibility and inevitability of Resurrection.

The hope I now have is not as compelling, I'll admit. It's a lot less boisterous. More careful. Non-committal. I recognize that the things I hope for may never happen. But I hope anyway. And instead of "bursting forth in glorious day," this new hope pokes its young shoots warily out of the snow and smiles, thinking it might be Spring.

Critical Thinking is Important!

Tom Hail

I borrowed this form Pharyngula because it resonates with me:

Why I am an atheist – Tom Hail

 March 14, 2012 at 6:44 am  PZ Myers

This is a letter I wrote my aunt in 2007 after she asked why I wanted to take her faith away from her.

Why I am godless.

I don’t understand how perfectly rational, intelligent, kind, and responsible people can believe in a God. It baffles me totally. And I think about it a lot, not like I feel like I am missing anything myself but in wonder at how this belief can be corrected. You know, I wouldn’t trade our family for any other family, I enjoy and love them all and the fact that most have faith saddens me somewhat.

I do not see any god anywhere I look. From the maelstrom of quantum mechanics in particle physics, to the busy chemistry of each living cell, to the beautiful physics of aerodynamics, to the majestic geology of our earth, to the titanic forces in our solar system, to the stupendous forces driving our galaxy and universe… it is all so awesome and beautiful that to attribute any of it to God’s creation is, to me, insufficient. That there are questions and problems with what we understand only makes discovery all that more meaningful. It is all so hugely complex in total, but it all builds upon many simpler things. Evolution is perfect simplicity which builds very slowly into the complex beauty of life we have today. I feel that beauty in my heart much better than I can express in words. Even without the controversies of life and evolution, the complexities of the universe are so much beyond a god, needs no explanation with a god. God is so unnecessary.

I have a saying that has gelled in my mind over the last year or so… Atheism: Natural Morals, Real Meaning, Credible Truth.

Our morals come naturally, someone writing them down and calling them the word of God seems like plagiarism to me. And I think they added in the rules to help control the masses better, or at least to control the women better. It looks to me that our natural morals come from our need to survive, we can’t survive if we are killing each other, we are wired for survival and propagation of the population. Stoning women for adultery seems wrong and it is, it isn’t a natural moral, but the writers of the “messiah’s” words seem to have another motive, valid at the time maybe, probably to help control the population to their benefit. The need to survive and procreate is very simple but a lot of things derive naturally from it. Helping others, kindness to your children, education, it just builds and builds on it. To me it boils down to “relieve and prevent suffering, give pleasure.” If I am doing that in any way, I am being true to my morals.

Real meaning in life also comes from the need to survive and procreate, to do so means we must discover how our world works, adapt, learn, overcome problems, coexist with the individuals of our species, coexist with our world. This is real meaning to me. To worship a deity hoping for a good result when I die doesn’t provide any meaning. The discovery of our world may be the most important and leads us into our future. If we stop, we will stagnate and suffer. I think our species made a mistake creating religions, it is a dead end that we have to back out of to progress on, but maybe it was a lesson we had to learn.

Credible truth, the biggest being that this is it. This is heaven, hell, whatever you make of it. This is your one life. You are only borrowing the atoms you consist of for your sort life time and then they are recycled into the universe to be used again. I am ok with that. It doesn’t scare me. I wish it weren’t so but that is the way of the universe. We are such a small mote in just our galaxy which is a small object in an immense universe. But the meaning of life is to be all that you can be to your family and friends, community, and world. That is a real truth that I can believe in.

Why is this important to me? I see thousands dying monthly, sometimes daily in fighting to the death over what are to me fairy tales. Fighting over essentially worthless land, fighting for what boils down to power. Much of it in the name of their religion. It makes me angry. The war in Iraq has many religious overtones that disturb me. The trillions of dollars this is going to cost us is going to hurt.

I didn’t mean to write this on a Sunday, it just turned out that way, I’ve been busy and I had to compose it some in my mind first. I had a great day yesterday with flying passengers for the 99’s scholarship fundraiser. Allena came over and helped out the ladies. It was one of those things I do that gives real meaning to my life, showing 10 people their world from above.

Tom Hail
United States