Talk Me Out Of It

mark says:

I’ve been a christian all my life. I now want to be reasoned out of it. Please help

Jesus Couldn’t Have Died for Original Sin

Christianity tells us that we are all sinners and doomed to Hell, unless we accept Jesus as our Savior.  The reason we are doomed is that we are all sinners. The Apostle Paul says in Rom 5:12:

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

The reason that we are all sinners is that we “inherit” the “Original Sin” of Adam.  As sinners we deserve death.  Only Jesus’ death could atone for Original Sin.

Right?

That puts Christians in an awkward position.

Christians have to hold that there really was an Adam and Eve and a talking Serpent in the Garden of Eden.  They have to accept the creation story of Genesis. Most Christians have abandoned this position in favor of concepts like “divinely guided evolution”.  A few Christians still argue in favor of creation a la Genesis but the arguments have been exposed over and over as baseless dogma and have rapidly lost traction among all but the most fundamentalist of Christians.

Or, Christians can accept evolution, even if they qualify it as divinely guided evolution.  Then there was no Adam in a garden with Trees of Life and Knowledge.  If there is no Adam, there is no Original Sin.  There is only our nature (is it sinful?).  And our nature is the product of evolution (is it divinely guided?).  If there is no Original Sin, then why did Jesus die?

Do You Believe in Faith Healers?

I’ve always been fascinated by faith healers, and even more fascinated by the people who believe in them.  This video is long – really long – just over an hour.  And it’s often a bit slow and boring, but it’s also astounding.  Don’t miss any of it!

If you are a believer in God and in faith healers, consider what you have just watched here.  Then ask yourself: “in what material ways are the faith healers I believe in different from Pastor James Collins?”

If you are a believer in God but not a believer in faith healers, you might join me in recognizing how believers in faith healing don’t simply believe – they need to believe.  Any attempt to dissuade them from their belief is not met with good reasons for their belief, but instead it is met by emotional responses that are disguised as reasons.  Because in the end, the “reasons” they give are not rational, and there is no real reasoning with them.  You might ask yourself: “is this like my belief in God?  Do I believe for good reasons, or do I simply need to believe?  Are my “reasons” rational?  Or are my reasons specifically designed to justify what I already believe?”

Extra credit:

Atheists should also contemplate the nature of their belief that God does not exist: “do I start with a belief that God does not exist and then seek reasons to justify this belief, or is my belief that God does not exist a result of reason?”

Since by definition, agnostics don’t find that the evidence they have is sufficient to form a belief regarding the existence of God, can “needing to believe” influence their belief about the existence of God?

Creating the Creator

We humans believe in all sorts of different gods.  It is a rare person who believes that all of these gods exist.  Most people in modern society believe that only one particular God exists (Allah or Yahveh for example), or they believe that only a particular pantheon exists (The Father, Son, Holy Ghost, and angels for example). And a few of us believe that none of these gods exist.

Unless you happen to be one of the rare people who believe that all gods that anyone conceives of really exists, you can join me in exploring how people come to dream up the gods that do not exist (excluding, of course, your god or pantheon which really does exist).  Here is one plausible account:

Memories of the dead

When a parent dies, there is very often the mistaken feeling that the parent is still somehow still with us after his or her death. We continue to “feel” the parent’s presence for several months. Our memories of the parent, emotional denial of his or her death, our habit of having the parent with us since birth, all make it difficult to realize the loss. In some societies, ancestor worship is the main religion. These feelings, that the parent is still present, has grown into a codified belief system where ancestors are always present and watching over their progeny.

When some ancestors become more powerful than others (the spirit of my great great granddad can protect me against the spirit of your great great granddad), that ancestor becomes a demigod. Each generation attributes more powers and abilities to their demigods. Over time, the demigods begin to look like what we would call gods.

Belief in the unseen

Most of the time, we (and other animals) can distinguish an agent from an inanimate object. We can tell for example that a lief blowing overhead in a stiff wind is inanimate, even though it is moving erratically. We can tell that a hawk gliding smoothly overhead is animate; the hawk is an “agent”. An agent can act, it has the ability to direct it’s movements. Inanimate objects can be acted upon but they don’t act of their own accord.

We are good at recognizing agency. Our ability to recognize agency is hardwired in us, it is essential for our survival. We can recognize pray, and more importantly, we can recognize predators. But because our ability to recognize agency isn’t perfect, we have evolved to err on the side of mistaking an inanimate object for an agent. This has some disadvantages. One disadvantage is that we might flee at the sound of a falling pine cone. However, this is far more preferable than erring in the other direction – it is far more preferable than mistaking an agent for an inanimate object. That is how you get eaten by a predator!

We’ve all heard a creak in the house that sounded a little like a footstep. Or we’ve seen a shadow that look a little like a person. Because we are hardwired to recognize agency, and if we can’t tell for sure, we’re hardwired to err on the side of recognizing agency when there is no agent. We interpret these “unseen agents” as spirits or ghosts. Spirits and ghosts are what we call agents that are invisible. Most of us have had the experience of “seeing a ghost” until we look close and discover we have seen a shadow.

Language develops

As hominids become bipedal, children could no longer easily hang from the mother as she goes about her business of foraging and traveling. The child had to walk close by as soon as he became big enough to walk. As a result, physical gestures between mother and child became less effective since the child and mother were no longer in constant physical contact. Vocal utterances began to take on a primary role in mother child communication: “stay close by, beware of danger, eat this, stop that!”

Language takes on a more important role as toolmaking develops – it’s a way to pass on the skill to children and other tribesman. Finally, it becomes a way of facilitating cooperation. Language evolves from grunts and hoots and becomes symbolic.

Language can describe the unseen

As language becomes more sophisticated, it becomes adequate to describe a dead ancestor or tribesman to a child who has never seen him.

Conflation of real and imaginary

The child grows up with the understanding that there are unseen people who everyone believes to be real. The same child hears stories of mistaken (or intentionally invented) agents which are indistinguishable from stories of extinct agents. There is a conflation between an imagined agent who never existed with real extinct people who really did exist.

Imagining Gods

Memories of ancestors become distorted as more superhuman feats are attributed to them. Super ancestors are imagined to explain apparent agency that would not be possible actions of (normal) dead relatives: thunder, earthquakes, the sun tracking along the sky, floods, famine, epidemics.

Imagining a Creator

Logic develops and people begin to recognize that things have origins. What is the agent that created those things? The origin stories from different cultures give us examples of various Creators that we humans have imagined.

Was Jesus Always Perfect?

There are plenty of verses in the Bible that we can take to mean that Jesus was perfect (“a lamb without blemish”, etc), but the Bible doesn’t say outright that Jesus was always perfect. On the contrary, Hebrews implies that Jesus was not always perfect, but rather became perfect at some point. Hebrews 5:7-9 (NIV) says:

During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him

According to this passage, Jesus was not the source of salvation until after he was made perfect. This has important ramifications. It means that people who lived before Jesus was made perfect, did not have a source of salvation. Without a source of salvation during their lifetime, God’s most faithful servants, like Moses, King David, King Solomon, and the prophets, went to hell when they died. It also means that if Jesus was always God then God isn’t necessarily perfect. Alternatively, it means that Jesus wasn’t always God (because God is always perfect).

There is good evidence that the author of Hebrews didn’t believe that Jesus was God, at least not in a way that makes the Father and Jesus one and the same. Here is a good presentation of the evidence: www.prudentialpublishing.info/hebrews_view_of_Jesus.htm

Which do you think is true…

1) Jesus was always God but God can be imperfect
2) Jesus became God after he became perfect
3) Hebrews is not the Inerrant Word of God

…and why?

Faith: Who Needs It?

Who needs faith? This isn’t merely a rhetorical question, it’s a question that deserves an answer. The most basic demand that God makes of us is that we have faith in Him; that we believe He exists. Any other faith about God depends on faith that God exists. If we are to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we must first believe that God exists.

A logical problem:

If we know that God makes this demand of us, then we already know that God exists and we can’t have faith – which is what God demands of us. Is there a demand that we believe in God? Yes. Who is making the demand? God. Because we know that God exists, we can’t also have faith that God exists.

We don’t have faith that the London exists. In fact we can’t have faith that London exists because we know it exists. Faith is incompatible with knowledge.

Another logical problem:

Why does anyone think that God requires us to have faith? Because the Bible says so. How do we know that what the Bible says is from God? Because the Bible says it’s from God. Why should we believe what the Bible says? Because the Bible says it’s from God. That begs the question: Why should we believe what the Bible says?

The problem of Theodicy

If God exists and He requires above all that we believe that He exists, then why would He place us in the situation in which we find ourselves; a situation in which we haven’t a shred of evidence that would lead us to believe that He exists? If God carefully obscures from us all evidence of His existence, then God is responsible for our lack of faith.

Who needs us to have blind faith?

The leaders of Christianity, both modern leaders as well as its ancient founders, demand above all that we have blind faith in God. Blind faith, faith without any evidence, is a fundamental requirement without which Christianity could not thrive. If Christian leaders had any knowledge of God’s existence, they wouldn’t need to “believe” that God existed, nor would they need their followers to “believe” that God exists. God’s existence would be a forgone conclusion.

Put this to the test!

Ask your Priest, Pastor, Elder, Minister this question: “do you know that God exists?” If his or her answer is:

• Yes – then ask if he or she has faith that God exists, and discuss the incompatibility with knowledge and faith. Post any reasonable answers here.
• No or I’m Not Sure – then ask why he or she believes that God exists. Post any reasonable answers here.

Word of God vs. Eyewitness Accounts

Christian groups, like Evangelicals, Southern Baptists, and others, accept the Bible as the literal Word of God. This view is often summed up as:

“God said it, I believe it, that settles it”.

In other words, any passage in the Bible should be taken as if the words proceeded directly from God’s mouth. They don’t all agree on how words from God got written into the Bible. Some theorize that God dictated the text word-for-word to the various authors of the Bible and the authors faithfully recorded the words.

Other theories, like Verbal, Plenary Inspiration, are a bit more nebulous in that no one is really willing to say exactly what they mean by “inspiration”. Nevertheless, this theory also holds that every word in the Bible proceeds (somehow) directly from God. The Christian Faith website presents a succinct summary this belief.

These same Christian groups claim that the Gospels are first-hand eyewitness accounts. They believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are reporting their own first-hand, eyewitness accounts of their encounters with Jesus. They are reporting what they’ve seen with their own eyes and heard with their own ears. Since eyewitness accounts virtually always vary from person to person, the accounts in the different Gospels are different as we should expect. These accounts, though different and at times conflicting, are nevertheless compelling evidence of the historicity and the nature of Jesus. You and I should believe that Jesus is the Son of God based in part on these eyewitness accounts.

An eyewitness account by its very definition cannot be the Word of God.

If the words in the eyewitness accounts come from God, then the words are not the evangelist’s own eyewitness account. If the words are the evangelists own personal account, then the words are not God’s words. The two claims are incompatible: either all words in the Bible are from God (and there are no eyewitness accounts from the Evangelists), or the Bible contains eyewitness accounts which are not God’s words.

Of course it is also possible that words in the Bible do not come from God and that the Gospels are not eyewitness accounts. Those two claims are perfectly compatible.

If God is Real…

William says:

If God is real,and He created you,and you believe this without a shadow of a doubt, then you would be like “us”. Tell me, how would you feel if were constantly told that you’re beliefs are but mere petty childish dreams. Would you appreciate it? I understand you lack of evidence to persuade you, but are you that alone that you can’t believe in this “God” I so aware serve? Is it that you have no evidence that you can’t believe or were you taught not to believe, or maybe even are you just not believe because you can? Evidence is but a small reaction to atheist. If you are an atheist then you made that choice not to believe,so stick to your disbelief…But if your ready to believe (I doubt you will be) then come to Him yourself. But, until then, it be wise of you to continue your disbelief. You say what you have to say, and we have to say what you do as well. This battle of He is/He isn’t will go on forever…So express yourself.
Thank You… WDC

How Many Atheists & What is Up with These Agnostics?

Green Genius Says:

Hi Atheist, what do you suppose is the real number of atheists in the US? Admitted is going to be less than actual. Also what about EU’s? And the world’s? And someone just told me that they were agnostic because they said some things can never be proven. I said back to him yes, but I doubt a supernatural being could ever be proven either and he agreed? So what is up with these agnostics?

Is Deism tenable?

Lee Says:

Is Deism tenable? I’m an atheist insomuch as I do not believe in any sort of theistic concept of a deity; however, I often wonder if there exists an impersonal, non-interventionist type of provisional “First Cause”.