Godless

The term “godless” is one that has been supercharged with connotations of immorality and depravity. “The fool hath said in his heart ‘there is no god.’ They are corrupt, they have done abominable works; there is none that doeth good”, or so the quote goes from Psalm 14:1. Scriptures such as these are thrown in our faces when we dare to assume the identity of “atheist.” Here’s another for good measure (I’ve kind of modernized the KJV translation here):

“For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.

Because what may be known of God is apparent to them, because God has shown it to them.

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that were made, which demonstrate his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

Because that, when they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were they thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” -Romans 1:18-21

In summary, this passage is giving an argument that is commonly given by many Christian apologists today. It states that the complexity of creation makes the existence and power of God “apparent” and that people who do not “glorify” or express gratitude to God are “vain”, “foolish”, and their hearts have been “darkened.” I won’t quote it here, but the writer of Romans also goes on in the passage to state that people who worship deities outside the Judeo-Christian tradition will be given over to homosexuality, in effect stating that God will turn unbelievers over to even greater sin and delusion (more on that later).

Christians do indeed believe that a complex “creation” has to imply a complex “creator”. It is unfathomable to them to think that the complicated world came about spontaneously or “by accident.” They consider things like human intelligence, morality, and physical intricacy to be proof that it is all by design. They take on a very anthropocentric approach to the world, very much convinced that as in the Genesis account, animals, nature, and the very planet itself were created primarily for the consumption and enjoyment of human beings.

If we look outside the Genesis account, however, to the theory of evolution, then we see that this theory stands in direct opposition to that assumption. The world, it states, was not made primarily for humans; there is no anthropocentric agenda in the laws of nature. All forms of life evolved on their own- although they are also interdependent- but human beings, because of the way we adapted to our environment, managed to come out on top. The YouTuber Mr Atheist makes this argument more eloquently than I do in this video. Also, I recommend the book Undeniable by Bill Nye, because it really breaks down evolution for someone who was either raised without a knowledge of it- like I was- or finds it hard to grasp the concepts.

“So maybe God didn’t directly create us”, Christian apologists might admit, “But surely someone must have imbued us with our sense of right and wrong.” If you believe that morality comes from a Higher Power, specifically the Judeo-Christian god, you may also accept that the foundations of that morality, the Ten Commandments, were literally dictated to Moses on Mt. Sinai, or at the very least that those principles were divinely inspired. What happens, though, if you go over to Old Babylon, a “heathen” nation, and look at the Laws of Hammurabi? They are estimated to have preceded the Ten Commandments by over three hundred years, but similarities can be drawn between the two texts. There are also similarities between the Laws of Hammurabi and the expanded Jewish law.

Maybe upon seeing this, you could try to argue that the Judeo-Christian god inspired both sets of laws, but if you say this, it does not match with the account the Bible gives of non-believers as “foolish” and “corrupt”. If non-believers can adhere to Judeo-Christian morality without a realization of YHWH as God, then a belief in YHWH is not necessary for morality. This negates, rather than supports the argument.

Furthermore, we can see that what has been regarded as “moral” has changed over the years. Most Christians today don’t support slavery, killing rebellious children, stoning adulterers, or advocate amputation as a form of punishment. Does this mean that the “laws of God” as described in the Mosaic books were not perfect? The writer of Hebrews attempts to answer this by stating that the old ceremonial Jewish sacrifices had been replaced by the sacrifice of Jesus, but that doesn’t explain the abandonment of much of the legal code. It seems to me that the goalposts have been shifted farther and farther over the years, with many Christians remaining stubborn on a few choice issues like the death penalty, homosexuality, and corporal punishment for children.

Speaking of homosexuality, I told you that I would get back to it. Regarding worshippers of other deities, the writer of Romans wrote that God “gave them up unto vile affections.” In case there was any confusion over what that meant, it continues this way:

“…even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise, also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust toward one another; men with men, working that that which is unseemly…and even as they did not like to retain God in their minds, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.”  -Romans 1:25-28

So, the question now is, why would a moral god give people over to immorality? Even if they disregarded him initially, are they now worthy of being given no way back to God? In Romans chapter 9, the writer expounds on this further by drawing an example from the way that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in the Old Testament account. The writer pantomimes the question by stating, “How does he then find fault, for who has resisted his will?” and answers it by saying, “Who are you to reply against God?” (Romans 9:19-20) This makes the claim of God’s morality unfalsifiable, because if God is all-powerful and you are a mere human, then you have no right to question anything.

My position is that morality is a human construct, and that it has changed and evolved over the years as humanity has progressed. Slavery continues to be a huge issue today, but it is still regarded as unlawful in most countries. Unfortunately, people are still being stoned for apostasy, adultery, or being gay, but the Western world- which is thought to have been established on Judeo-Christian principles- has largely abandoned these practices. Why? Did God change? I thought he said, “I change not” (Malachi 3:6)? If God is the same no matter what, then maybe we are in error.

Honestly, I find it much easier to just believe that the capricious god of the Bible doesn’t exist, than to try to go through the mental gymnastics required to explain his confusing, contradictory actions. The Old Testament account has human frailty and fallacy written all over it. Disproving the god of the Bible doesn’t necessarily disprove all gods, but when I read stories of other deities they seem just as unproven and fantastical. If I easily discount Greek mythology, then why should I cling to ideas of a god parting a Red Sea, raining down manna, or literally writing his commandments on tablets of stone? Why should I cling to vestiges of ancient morality, even as so much of it is disregarded by the very people who tout it the most? Why should I attempt to follow a god who seems to either draw or repel followers to himself on a whim?

When Christians mock atheists and ramble about “Biblical morality”, they do so without a concrete definition of Biblical morality to turn to. They stand on a “moral high ground” that is based on an extremely unstable foundation. When they behave as though the existence of the Judeo-Christian god should be “clearly seen” from the examination of the natural world, they are ignoring the wealth of creation stories that preceded those found in the Bible. There is nothing on the surface that makes the Bible appear any more factual than any of these earlier accounts. They often also misrepresent the theory of evolution in their arguments. Finally, when they quote verses like Romans 1:20, they only serve to further alienate non-believers, because of the smarmy assertion that everyone who disbelieves is immoral.

I could certainly expand about what constitutes morality in a “godless” society, but mostly I feel that we are already there. If no god(s) exist in the first place, then the question of morality has been a human one all along. If fearing the wrath of god(s) was enough to “keep people in line”, then we should have seen a much more equitable world when religion was reigning supreme, but we did not. We have, and have had, wars, violence, and injustice throughout the ages, but if we look at the modern age, the world is less violent now than at other times in history. If people being more devout were responsible for this change, we wouldn’t be seeing it. Also, it is a few years old now, but Christopher Hitchens wrote a wonderful book called God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything which explains how religions have historically incited wars and impeded social and scientific progress throughout the world. He does so without coming across as crass or reductionist, and he doesn’t imply that atheists haven’t also caused their fair share of conflict. It is a historical book that is well-researched and insightful.

It is short-sighted to assume that just because someone is an atheist, they lack a moral compass or are ignoring evidence of a higher power that should be obvious. Most of us were raised in religion and did not take the decision to abandon it lightly. To me, the teachings found in the Bible often go up against what most of us in the Western world- Christian and otherwise- think of as moral. In my opinion, “God’s commandments” are often immoral, not because God is imperfect or immoral, but because human beings are imperfect, and our understanding of justice and equality has evolved as we have. As we’ve become more secular, we haven’t found the disintegration of society as many Christian apologists predicted, but instead we have found strength of character and a renewed kinship with our fellow human beings.

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Still Getting Used to It

It has been a few months since I fully admitted to myself that my belief in God has all but totally vanished. It has been even longer since I began first questioning the core tenets of Evangelical Christianity. It has been longer still since I first expressed my chagrin at predestination theory. Despite all that time that has passed, I still find that some old habits are hard to break.

For one, I still find myself “darkening the door of a church”- specifically, my home church, which I had developed a great fondness for. I still harbor that fondness, honestly, otherwise I would see no reason to continue my visits. The visits are getting fewer and farther between, though, and even though I keep thinking that maybe the feeling of disharmony I feel when I hear the sermons will somehow magically dissipate, it never does. I still have a sharp sense of being out of place. The memory of me lifting my hands, singing, and swaying in worship with everyone else stands in sharp contrast to the way I stand now, either with my arms folded across my chest or hanging stiffly at my sides.

Each time the pastor talks about the benefits of tithing, or the amazing, wonderful life you can have in Jesus, I am reminded that you must always give up something in the present to secure this bountiful future. When cheers rise from the crowd as “testimonies” are given, my mind immediately goes to the idea of confirmation bias and the role it must play in these miracle stories. I cannot rejoice when they proclaim “He is risen! Jesus is alive!” because I do not picture the Son of God seated on a heavenly throne next to His Father. I see in my mind the vast, star-speckled blackness of space- an “empty heaven.”

I started my Tumblr account in January of 2016 and transferred most of my religious-themed posts over here in March of this year. My public transition from theism to atheism has been over three years long, even though as I said before, my questioning started long before then. I remember being 15 years old and being disturbed by the possibility that my non-Christian friends might be destined to hell. That is also when I began to feel unbearably unsettled with the concept that everything we do as humans has already been predetermined, including our choice to believe in Jesus as our savior. I questioned a god that would test the faith of Abraham by asking him to offer his son Isaac, even if he knew what the results would be.

Despite these serious cracks in the foundation of my faith, I was able to cover up the cracks for years. There are many Christians whose faith survives these doubts. They might switch denominations, become “non-practicing”, or become Christian apologists when they dig deep and find the answers to their questions. Other times, they simply swallow truths that may be bitter and stay out of tradition or loyalty. I could do none of these things. I was determined to either embrace faith wholeheartedly, or not at all. I did not desire to believe in a god who did not possess power, but my god’s power was rapidly diminishing in my view. The omnipotence of the God of the Bible did not seem to be in agreement with His unfathomable love; I could not embrace a god who claimed to have complete power over everything and repeatedly refused to solve the problem of human suffering, no matter how wise he seemed to be.

Further evidence still against the existence of the Christian God has been His repeatedly failing promise to send His Son back to earth. I know, “no one knows the day or the hour”, “a day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” and “the Lord is not slack concerning his promises…he is longsuffering…”. There is a redundancy built into the promises, a “keep waiting, because you never know” kind of aspect to them. I will decline to go into detail about all that, but I know that I have personally waited long enough. The Second Coming of Christ has been predicted incorrectly more times than I would even dare to quantify. In fact, Christians have been predicting Christ’s arrival since the beginning of the faith. To date, none of these predictions have been correct. Truly, it only has to happen once for it to be right, but with God intervening so little in human life now, I am skeptical that He will one day open the clouds and let His righteousness and judgment rain down on the earth.

Even so, “I’m still getting used to it.” When good things happen, I still want to open my mouth and praise God. Humorously, I said “thank God” to my boyfriend, and quickly qualified it by saying, “I mean, I’m thanking all the gods I don’t believe in.” He said, “We get it. You don’t have to qualify it. It’s a saying.” (In other words, he was telling me to get over myself.) I similarly find myself wanting to say a prayer, and sometimes I do. “God, I know you’re not real but if you are, please help.” Even though I look at the date, realize that it is 2018 and all that hoopla about the Jesus coming back in Y2K is now almost two decades in the past, I am still tempted to think, “He is coming soon.” I do not think that I will ever unlearn Christian jargon, or fully forget scriptures that I labored to memorize. Evangelical Christian culture is in my blood. My entire early life is defined by it. I still love “Oceans”, “Ever Be”, “Brave” and various other Contemporary Christian tunes that may come across the radio (and in secret I still sing them). I sit with my family for Bible study when I visit, even though I know it is not mandatory anymore.

Deconversion has been a process for me. Some people are able to make a quick, clean break from their Christian culture, but for a lot of us it is an ongoing journey. There is always something that brings back a memory. People think that we stopped believing because we are angry, that we went, “Screw you God, I don’t believe in you anymore” and that was how simple that it was. They neglect to realize that when we go home for the holidays- or even just for a casual visit- there it is in our faces again, and there we are reminded by the people we love the most that we are different. Some of us are children of pastors. Many of us have served in the church, and some have even had leadership positions. Some, but not all of us, are queer. Whatever the circumstances and whatever the reason, we share this same burden of being “ex-fill-in-the-blank”.

Sometimes we get so concerned with who we are not that we forget who we are. I know that I do, sometimes. I forget that I am more than just an “ex”, that I am a woman of extraordinary character and even more impressive resolve. I know that despite it being a time-intensive process, I will some day feel comfortable in this new skin of mine. God is dead to me, but I have been reborn. I have a whole new life to live, and I plan to live it with everything that I have.

 

 

God is Not Dead?

It is said that God can speak aloud. According to the Biblical account, His voice thundered from heaven at Jesus’ baptism, proclaiming, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” It was said that he guided the Israelites by way of a visible cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He rained bread from heaven, parted the Red Sea, and made the earth open its mouth and swallow transgressors. Sin was dealt with in a swift and visible way.

Of course, God’s lack of intervention in certain events- like the martyring of Stephen in the New Testament- does not in and of itself prove that the Judeo-Christian God does not exist. Revelations speaks of Christians who have been martyred achieving a glorious resurrection in the future. Paul says that, “If in this life alone we have hope in Christ, then we are of all men most miserable.” (1 Corinthians 15:19) He too held out the promise of one day living again in God’s kingdom as a reason to endure persecution and ridicule.

In this post I want to address the problem of those who claim to speak for God and Christ and have done unspeakable evil. The Ku Klux Klan claimed to be a Christian organization. Their leaders never came to a sudden realization of their wrongness or died suddenly- in fact, the group persists today, albeit with reduced power and influence. The Bible was used as an excuse to justify the slavery and mistreatment of millions of people. Thousands of Catholic priests, supposedly holy men who were tasked with helping people connect with God, were found guilty of child molestation. Some Evangelical Christian men abuse their wives without remorse, holding Paul’s controversial “Wives, submit to your husbands in all things” teachings over their wives’ heads like a weapon. Cult leaders seek to use the scripture to subjugate and control the lives of their followers. Parents eschew medical help in favor of trusting God, and God lets their children die.

In all the above cases, God never appeared to any of these people in a vision and admonished them for their wrongness. He never shouted from heaven and rebuked them for any of their misdeeds. No, people instead are allowed to kill, steal, and destroy in His name, with seemingly no response from heaven. I understand that you may say that God uses the wickedness of humanity for His greater purpose, but in doing so you then admit that God is responsible for evil actions. Whether this makes or breaks your theology is up to you.

If you say “Evil came into the world because of man’s rebellion against God, and because of the wiles of Satan” then you ignore the point of what I am saying. These aren’t people who are rebelling outside the paradigm of Christianity. These are people who take the name of Christ on their lips, and yet do the exact opposite of what He has commanded. You would think that a God who is dedicated to the salvation of all mankind, would make sure that no one was confused about whether or not he was behind certain unfortunate actions. We are talking about a god who killed people for disrespecting the ark of the covenant (see the Old Testament). You would think that He would have some sort of response for people who brazenly and unabashedly disrespected the “better covenant” (Hebrews 8:6) that comes through Jesus.

Can you see where I’m coming from?

Either you must admit that God doesn’t particularly care that people are besmirching Him, or that He has limited power to act in this world. Neither of those conclusions fit into the Judeo-Christian concept of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God.

I know you have one last tool in your toolbox, and that is to say that in the end of days, everything will be made right. In Jesus’ parables, He talked about people who disobeyed his instructions. He talked about the parable of the people left in charge of their master’s household, and how in the master’s absence they beat the servants and engaged in drunken and destructive behavior. He talks about the people who didn’t feed, clothe, and visit his brethren in prison, and what their fate will be. According to Jesus, their fate will be most unpleasant.

This brings me to my next point- how Christianity often explains away the problems of the modern age by moving the solutions for them forward into the future. Remember how I talked about Apostle Paul and the author of Revelations talking about the promise of resurrection as an incentive to suffer through the difficulties of life? This is a theme that exists throughout the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus. He asks his disciples to forsake all in following him, and when they ask him about it, he says this;

“Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s,

But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.

But many that are first shall be last; and the last first.” -Mark 10:29-31

The problem is, not everyone seems to receive that hundredfold. As for “eternal life”, that is not guaranteed. No one truly knows what will happen to us after death. All we have to go on is what we know about life now and the people who have passed on. We know that NDEs (near death experiences) have been explained scientifically, at least in part, and that people who have near death experiences often see images related to whatever their religious beliefs are at the time. A Hindu person isn’t going to have the same NDE as a Christian. Does this mean that both Hinduism and Christianity are correct about the afterlife? In other words, do you really want to sacrifice this physical life in order to gain an uncertain eternity?

In addition to providing these tantalizing promises for the future as a reason to explain away the inconsistencies of the present, the Bible also gives us a very stylized view of the past. As I pointed out earlier, God is displayed as being powerful and influential in the world, in a way that He is not expected to be today. Christians have fixed in their mind the image of a god who crafted the universe from mere words, turned the sea into blood, stopped the sun in the sky, and rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrha. They stand in awe of this god. He has high moral authority and cannot be questioned.

Even today, however, some of them do argue that He never stopped doing these mighty feats. They tell tales of food stretching to feed many more than it was intended to, of people speaking in languages they don’t know, of sick being healed and dead being raised. These stories, however, are often told from the perspective of Western privilege. We have medical advancements to “help” God along. We have wealth, so we can afford to pay tithes and then use confirmation bias to say that that’s the reason we got a promotion at work or some other financial boost. We can’t honestly take our prosperity gospel with us into places of extreme poverty and abject suffering. We can’t say that the reason we experience miracles is because we have more faith than these suffering people do.

Of course, Christian missionaries to these impoverished places don’t often say that. They often get down in the dirt and help. They consider themselves ambassadors of God. The truth is, God would never do anything if they weren’t there. God, despite having absolute power, has never used His power to help even one human being, without the intervention of other human beings. Whether we say God is using us for good or not, the point of the matter is that God can’t do anything without us. God cannot materialize food out of nothing. He can’t send rain on drought-blasted lands. If you think that these things happened, you’re looking through the “veil of time”, as described by Oh No Ross and Carrie host, Ross Blocher. The veil of time is what allows people to believe that incredible events are more likely to have happened if it was at some point thousands of years in the past.

God’s lack of intervention today points to only one thing, in my opinion- that God never intervened in the first place. Is it not possible that maybe those Old Testament stories were never meant to be taken literally, and that instead they teach us moral lessons and give us a glimpse into the mentality of the God we are said to worship? Does the ability of the Bible to be given to abuse and misinterpretation provide some inkling as to the darker nature of the text?

People sully God’s name without recourse, because God is either unwilling or unable to defend His reputation. Even though I could just as easily believe in an evil god as not believe in any sort of deity at all, I am leaning towards the “unable” category. I don’t think that God is capable of doing anything other than what we see happening already. People are going to besmirch His name, because humans have agency and that’s what they’re choosing to do. People can do good and exalt Him, because humans have agency and that’s what they’re choosing to do. I believe we are acting under our own influence, as misguided as that may sometimes be. I am also not convinced that there is any sort of second life after this one. This is all we have. We can either spend it being victims, or we can rise up and save ourselves.

God is dead.

 

Why I Left

The look is always the same. It starts off as mostly disbelief, then morphs gently into a pity that is tinged with disapproval. The face ultimately settles on to a look of kind resolve, and the mouth opens to express a variation of the same theme; if only you knew God like I do, you would never have left. If only you realized that God transcends the laws of nature, cannot be explained properly by science, and is infinitely wiser and more loving than we could ever comprehend. If only you understood the power of prayer, if only you could see the miraculous happenings that only the existence of God could explain, and if only you understood “But for the grace of God, there go I.” If only you could see that He is “as near as the next breath” and He holds that very breath of yours in His hands.

“What you need is a personal relationship with God.”

This implies that the reason I left Christianity was because my “relationship with God” was strained. God must have done something to offend me, and that must’ve been because I just didn’t really know or understand Him. I can safely assume that they are talking about the God of the Bible, and in that case maybe there is a degree of truth to their statements. Maybe I didn’t “know” him that well, despite those times when I thought I felt his presence, but now, I think I know him too well.

Evangelical Christians like to use a play on words regarding Jesus Christ’s atonement; they call it “at-one-ment.” They say that through Christ’s suffering, death, and subsequent resurrection, he broke the power of sin in the world and brought us back into oneness with God the Father. One of my biggest unanswered questions in Christianity is why exactly this would all be necessary.

To explain my disquiet, I will break this down into the three parts.

1)     His Suffering

Jesus suffered incredibly prior to his crucifixion. He was beaten, spit upon, and flogged. He was so wounded by his assault that he was unable to carry his own cross. The night that he was betrayed by Judas, he knelt and begged God, “If possible, remove this cup from me.”

My question is “Was it possible?” and no Christian can safely deny that it wasn’t. God, as they assert, could- and still can- do anything. The Judeo-Christian God was said to be a God of love. Jesus was identified as the “first begotten Son of God.” Is it incorrect to assume, that an all-powerful, loving god, could have come up with a less excruciating way for his firstborn son to redeem the world?

Even as Jesus begged his father to keep him from suffering, he said “Not my will, but yours be done.” Apparently, God “willed” for his son to die a gruesome death before he could deem it possible to forgive mankind and redeem them from the power of sin. I think that says a lot about the kind of god Christians worship, and it doesn’t fit into the paradigm of a loving god.

2)     His death

Jesus died by crucifixion. Crucifixion was considered so painful, that it is partly from where we get the word “excruciating.” I have already outlined Jesus suffering in the earlier point and have sought to bring attention to the fact that this was ostensibly done to him by his own father. There is even more lying below the surface of this Biblical account.

Christians seem to take it for granted that Jesus dying somehow saves us all from the power of sin. The biblical book of Hebrews makes references to the animal sacrifices performed under early Judaism, pointing out how they could only remove sin temporarily. Jesus was said to have removed sin permanently.

“Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” -Hebrews 9:12

Jesus was said to have become a substitution for the animal sacrifices of the old testament. The question that we need to ask, though, is why should an innocent animal- or an innocent man- need to be killed to atone for the wrongdoings of a guilty person? How or why does a divine being find it necessary to seek retribution in this way? Remember, this is a god that is said to be able to do absolutely anything. Why this ineffective and risky way of dealing with things?

3)     His resurrection

“For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” -1 Corinthians 15:16-17

According to Biblical legend, it was not enough that Jesus suffer and die. He also had to live again, so that he could reign in heaven with the Father and be the head of his Holy Church. By rising from the dead, he showed that even death could be conquered by the power of God.

The problem with this account, is that no one- outside of religious myth- has ever been recorded to come back to life after being dead for any substantial amount of time. Christians might use this to argue that this makes Jesus even more unique, that this proves that he was God’s first son, that this proves that he had power over sin and death. My issue is just that I can no longer bring myself to accept this account just because it appears in the Bible. There is no precedent for it or evidence of it.

Of course, Christians would argue that everyday answers to prayer are the result of a powerful God and living Jesus, but in my previous post I explained how most perceived answers to prayer can be explained as being the result of confirmation bias.

4)     Final Thoughts

Points 1-3 give a few reasons as to why I left. They stem more from a disagreement with the most basic tenets of Christianity, as opposed to some sort of personal dispute that I have with “the Creator”. I came to my conclusions very slowly and with a lot of consideration. I do not feel betrayed or jilted, I have simply moved away from faith in the god of Christianity to faith in other things. This isn’t about some unanswered prayer or a lack of feeling God’s love, it’s from a new hesitation to believe in any sort of god at all.

At this point, I have moved far beyond, “I’m really not sure what I believe anymore” into “These are the things that I know that I don’t believe.” I haven’t closed my mind to all religion, but I am also not on the fence either. Quoting scriptures to me won’t help your case, when I no longer believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. We are viewing the world through totally different lenses. It may never make sense to you why I left, even though I can understand why you stay.

You may say I “never had a personal relationship with God”, but now I know that I never will.

From Deism to Agnosticism to Atheism?

I have addressed numerous subjects during my many months of blogging. One of those subjects is whether miracle testimonies or positive personal anecdotes prove the existence of God. I concluded that they do not, largely because of a thing that I haven’t mentioned a lot by name: confirmation bias. The website Science Daily describes confirmation bias (with regards to science and psychology) as a “tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions, leading to statistical errors.”

A good example of confirmation bias would be when someone excitedly praises God when a parking space is open “for them” close to the front of the store. Various factors were involved in making that happen, all more to do with fortunate timing than anything else. If you want to bring the divine into it, you have to say that God (or a higher power) was personally responsible for the time the original parking space holder left home, the amount of time they spent in the store, and the exact time they pulled out to go home. God was also responsible for the actions that you took to get to the store at that exact moment. This would mean that God was somehow directly influencing even the smallest of peoples’ thoughts and actions- and doesn’t he/she/it have something better to do than to preside over who gets what parking space? More importantly, this muddles with the concept of free will and takes us into controversial predestination territory.

There is a website called The Odds Must Be Crazy that addresses the mathematical probability of various events. The purpose of the site is to express that certain things that we think of as “meant to be” or “synchronicities” aren’t as special as we think that they are. For example, if your friend calls you just as you’re thinking of them, you might think of this as an uncommon occurrence, but the probability of this happening is higher than you might expect. Or maybe you unexpectedly run into someone that you haven’t seen in years at a place where neither of you has ever been before, on the anniversary of when you first met. Or maybe- as I heard recently on the radio- you, your mom, and your grandma all end up having the same birthday. Is a higher power really responsible for these things, or are they more or less random chance?

It has been very hard to separate myself from the notion that “everything happens for a reason” and “some things are meant to be.” It is awfully unromantic to think that the universe began expanding inexplicably and is moving naturally towards entropy, with us existing as simply a consequence of this. We are very insignificant in the grand scheme of things, so it makes sense that we would try to draw significance from the finer details of life.

This brings me to my next point; is there an intelligent being that created the universe, and if there is, do we really have a duty to worship him/her/it? These were questions posed to me- more or less- by my younger brother, and these were some ideas that I had never considered. He also asked, if there really was a god who created everything, would he really be hyper-focused on such a relatively tiny part of his creation?

Again, we must envision the bigger picture here. Proponents of intelligent design propose that there is a god that created everything, and more often than not they describe this as the Judeo-Christian deity. Why would a god so advanced require animal sacrifice, and later on, a human sacrifice in order to forgive our sins? Why would God be concerned with our sins in this way? Why would He, being privy to our human frailties, require unconditional worship and devotion? Surely, we were created with more in mind than stroking the divine ego. Why if, in the end, belief was so important to Him, would He not reveal Himself more clearly to His creation?

Often times I am told not to ask why, but to simply accept the Bible is God’s word. My question would be, “On what basis?” There are plenty of purported “holy” texts that have preceded the Bible by centuries, and there are plenty that have come after that are said to amend it. Where is the starting point that will eventually lead us to the truth? Also, Christianity has yet to sufficiently explain how extreme human suffering fits into God’s loving plan for us and our planet.

So where does that leave me? When I started my journey away from Christianity, I still believed in God. I believed that “something” had to have made us. I later described this as the underlying life force of the universe. I believed that this being/entity could be contacted in meditation in order to receive guidance, but did not necessarily believe that the this being intervened on our behalf in the physical world. This helped me to resolve some of my misgivings about the apparent inconsistency of “divine intervention” in the world. As time went on, however, I began to feel frustrated at the thought of an intelligent god that existed but was unable to aid me or others in any practical way.

After my experience with that form of deism, I moved on to agnosticism. Maybe God was real, but there didn’t seem to be a concrete way to find out. Throwing out the idea of a higher power altogether did not quite appeal to me. Plus, the pity and/or disgust exhibited towards atheists from Christians was still something that I was keenly aware of. “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God” (Psalm 14:1, 53:1) was something that I have heard quoted my entire life. I was also familiar with Paul’s diatribe in Romans 1, where he states the creation itself is a testament to the invisible God. To say that I did not believe in any god at all seemed so final, so defeatist, and so concrete. I was afraid to exhibit that kind of certainty about something that had seemed so uncertain to me.

Despite all of that, here we are. Here I am, not seeing any reason to believe that there is an overruling higher power, yet still unwilling to let go of some of the baggage of theism. When something fortunate happens, I am still tempted to believe that there is hidden agency or that there are unseen forces pulling the strings (even though that also requires believing that misfortune is divine as well). I also had my experiences with 12-step programs, where admitting powerlessness and surrendering to a higher power are touted as foundational steps towards recovery. This “God presence” seems to permeate every aspect of our society. To step outside of that understanding, I feared, would make me a pariah to people that I loved. I envisioned the looks of disbelief when I told people that I no longer believed in any sort of intelligent creator.

The question, however, isn’t about how I will be perceived, but rather what I perceive to be true. I ran into a man, almost a stranger, who told me that I was going to hell if I didn’t believe the story about Jesus. Those were his perceptions. When he had asked me why I didn’t believe anymore, I told him that it “just didn’t seem real to me” and I told him I had some doctrinal issues. He told me that that was unfortunate, that it really was real, and after that was when he told me that if I didn’t believe in Jesus I was going to hell. He told me that he was “just the messenger”, as if that would soften the blow a little bit. Needless to say, it did not.

There wasn’t time to continue the conversation with him, and he would never have been able to understand my point of view anyway. I just went away from that, marveling as I do nowadays at the ease with which Christians are able to express their beliefs in this country. You have beliefs that are wholly based on a lack of evidence, and yet they roll off the tongue as if they were established fact. Once upon a time, I felt the same way. I was sure that there really was a man who miraculously rose from the dead 2000 years ago, seated himself physically in heaven, and would someday return for his “spotless church.” Never mind that we have never seen any evidence of heaven when we peer into the vastness of space, or the fact that to pass through the atmosphere- and then also survive there- is a pretty farfetched idea. Of course, Jesus was God, and somehow being God makes you able to trump the laws of nature. Also, maybe we can’t see heaven because it’s not up but rather in another dimension? (No Christian has ever told me that, I am just hypothesizing.)

A lot of Christians say that it takes just as much- if not more- faith to believe that we all came from nothing and then evolved, than it takes to just believe the Bible. I would beg to differ. I think it takes a whole lot of blind faith to ignore mountains of archeological and scientific evidence and still insist that the earth is merely thousands of years old. Or to see the complexity of the universe and believe that an invisible man in the sky created it all with his words in only six days. I’m not saying I have all the answers, but I feel that knowing that is what opens the door for more discovery and knowledge. Christianity claims to have this whole thing pegged down, and I just can’t accept those claims.

Ultimately, though, the purpose of my blog is not to discredit Christianity. It is simply a personal record of my journey from faith to disbelief. Even describing it like that- “faith to disbelief”- subtly supports the idea that belief in the idea of god is positive and a lack of belief in the idea of god is negative. Atheists are often isolated and judged based solely on their lack of belief in a deity, which is in many respects only one aspect of their lives. Atheism isn’t all about “disbelief” but it is also about the things that we do believe in. Many of us have faith in ourselves, in our friends and family, and of the ability of good to triumph over evil. The difference is that we do not depend on a higher power to bring about change in the world, but we allow the burden of responsibility to fall squarely on our own shoulders. It is a sobering position to be in, but we accept it because we believe that we have no other choice.

The next time I hear another story about guardian angels, miracle healings, “coincidences” (it’s always said with quotation marks), or Jesus helping someone find their car keys, I will again be reminded that confirmation bias allows people to interpret these events through the lens of whatever faith they ascribe to. If someone warns me about the possibility of hell, I will ask “Which one?” (also a great question if they urge you to believe in God.) The truth is that most of what religion has sought to explain can now be explained using our knowledge of biology, natural laws and how the universe operates. Every time someone tells me “God did this” I can ask, “Are you sure about that?” If your loved one was healed of cancer, are you sure that was God, or was it medical intervention? Are you aware of people that eschewed medicine in the name of God and died? If someone sent you money just when you needed it, are you sure that was God or was that just their intent meeting fortunate timing?

As I stated earlier, people take the pervasiveness of theism in our society (especially here in the U.S.) for granted. One of the most common things people say to encourage another person is, “I’ll be praying for you.” People often throw up the exclamations, “Oh my God” and “Thank God” regardless of their level of religiosity, because those ideas are so woven in to our culture. Natural disasters are legally called “acts of God”. God is everywhere and in everything, and like I said, stepping outside that narrative presents a lot of challenges. It hasn’t been easy for most people who have deconverted, and it hasn’t been easy for me, but I am ready to face the future with my eyes wide open.