From Christian to Borderline Atheist:

Questions that drove my change

I was raised in a Methodist household in Indiana. I found church boring and at the age of 13 finally convinced my parents to let me stop attending.

At the age of 18 I graduated High School and was clueless as to what to do with my life. It was right after the Vietnam war and everything felt hopeless. America, my other religion, had lost a war, or at least quit and that made me feel discouraged about the future.

Then my gymnastics coach from High School introduced me to Charismatic Christianity. It was presented as religion with a living and reactive god who wielded real power and listened to my prayers. Turned out to be a train which didn’t come but I’ll discuss that in another post.

In this post I want to share the questions about God and the Bible which lead to my doubting the veracity of the Bible’s claims.

Time was my first problem:

I was told that god was eternal and the bible placed the age of the earth at about 8k years give or take. I did study the Bible uh religiously. I read it through several times in multiple translations and even delved into the meanings of words in their original languages.

That the Earth and cosmos are only 8 thousand years old did bother me and now I see in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is a ridiculous assertion.

That bothered me but what was becoming more and more a problem was my disappointment in God. First of all the Bible presents two ways to salvation. The first is to be a Jew with sins washed away by animal sacrifice. The second is to believe in Jesus and he is the sacrifice for our sin.

But what I couldn’t get past is, why did he wait so long to show up? I mean what about all the millions and possibly billions that lived before he showed up? How do they get saved? I heard lame reasoning from many of my fellow christians and respected christian authors that I read but non of the answers work for me. If God loves everyone why would he leave all those people clueless about salvation? Jesus should have showed up thousands of years earlier.

I could go on about this for awhile but let me say that the end result for me was a deep feeling that if God was there he had handled this very badly and had not shown care of humans.

Hell was another problem

I’m sorry but the hell presented by the religion I was in, where you burn forever for not accepting Christ was just too cruel. Of course I did see that hell is not really a major subject in the bible and most of the ideas for it come from Dante’s inferno which is a work of political satire.

The idea of God allowing or creating that kind of eternal torment even to extremely evil people is just too cruel. I heard many excuses for god, that somehow he was not responsible blah blah blah but at the end of the day isn’t he responsible for everything? If he actually exists that is.

Eventually the constant mention of hell and who would end up in it made me feel less respect toward christians who are so obsessed with it. What is wrong with these people who relish others to suffer like that or at least tolerate the idea. It is harmful to the psyche.

Miracles

I have to admit one of the big draws of christianity for me was the magic or miracles, whatever you want to call them. And in my experience it simply doesn’t exist.

I watched people who refused to go to the doctor remain sick or die. We would pray and fast for a marriage and they would divorce anyway. Over my time in the religion I kept statistics in my head and the outcome of what we prayed for had no difference from mere chance. One church near where I lived and that was affiliated with mine early on had many women and babies die in childbirth because of refused medical treatment.

Most christians don’t go this far but I had to ask. Why wouldn’t god heal if he has the power? Where is the mercy? The pat answer is that there is a higher purpose or god know’s best. Sorry I had to eventually call bull shit on that one.

Human Atrocities

We all know about the horrible genocide of the jews in WWII but that is just the tip of the iceberg of human atrocity. Genocide, war, child abuse, murder…these go on and on. How could a loving god sit back and watch that? Not prevent it? Allow it? The most sane answer that I came to is that god does not exist or at least is not involved with us in an intimate way. I have to go there because if he/it exists and has no care for suffering then he/it is a monster.

There is more:

How religion is sometimes used to manipulate people and take their money. How religion keeps us from moving forward as a race. How American christians sometimes use it to get money or power or to justify ruining the environment or just to feel superior to others.

I cannot be an Atheist because that is also a declaration of faith. There is no evidence that god does or doesn’t exist and without evidence we cannot take a stand. We do anyway but I mean logically we cannot.

I have lived for many years now as an Agnostic and have been the happier for it. Even after loosing my first wife because she would not be with a non-christian and loosing most of my church friends at the time. Totally happier and the world makes sense. I follow logic and make decisions on that or simply because I want to do something.

It would be nice if there was a loving being to take care of and guide us, so nice. But reality is reality and we have to face it and live with it.