26. May 2008 by Frank.

Many atheists refer to the religious as being deluded or having delusions. I know for a fact that I deluded myself quite a bit at various times. But I never thought in terms of most churchgoers being deluded just because they believed. I never considered the whole belief system to be a delusion.

My delusions were more a matter of my trying to decide what god was telling me. One of the first things I ran into was needing an explanation why the church I was saved in destroyed itself so soon afterwards, I felt a compelling need to set things right, to correct all the wrong teachings. So I deluded myself into believing that was my mission from god – I was sent to be a prophet to get the churches back on the right track.

Unfortunately, no one else shared that little bit of insight as to my purpose in life.

I constantly became obsessed with one doctrine or another. I convinced myself of some absurd explanations for why various things would happen to me. Everything has a purpose, everything is a part of god’s plan. Random chance or coincidence were not acceptable explanations.

I believe I went much further overboard than most people. Like I’ve admitted before I’m not compulsive but I am obsessive. One of the main things if not the main thing I became obsessed with was spiritual gifts. Specifically the gifts of communication. I wanted to know what god was saying to me and I was determined to have that knowledge no matter what. Even if I had to make it up myself.

Which is what I finally realized I was doing. I was making decisions and then I was putting words in god’s mouth to support those decisions. When the amount of decisions was far overbalanced on the side of error, I had to admit I was deluding myself. If god was really talking to me, I shouldn’t have been making so many bad choices.

The only good thing about the obsessive side of my character is that my main obsession has always been to find the truth. When I’m wrong (and I’m often very wrong) I eventually admit I’m wrong. I throw out all the baggage I accumulate and start over.

This is why and how I got away from the word of faith movement, the prosperity gospel, the charismatics, the Pentecostals, and even the Baptists despite diving into all of them headfirst with no hesitations. My obsession with the truth stayed with me through the stroke. Even though I could have walked away from religion entirely without the slightest regret or feeling about it of any kind, I wanted to know what happened. I wanted to know how I could have been so wrong.

I wanted to know why god abandoned me.

I will say this about my delusions, they helped me not to panic during the stroke. I thought I had entered into perfect peace, the presence of god. That was my ultimate goal in life so I had absolutely no fear or apprehension. It was bliss. It was wonderful. It was death and I know for a fact that death is nothing to fear.

But my god wasn’t there waiting for me.

He wasn’t there when I came out of it. He wasn’t there the next day, the next week, the next month. He hasn’t shown up in nearly ten years now. I can’t find him in church services. I can’t find him in his word. I couldn’t find him in prayer.

I couldn’t accept the obvious reason – there is no god – so I started re-evaluating my doctrines. I started looking at the bible with the idea that I had misunderstood it somehow. If you read the bible without assuming it is the inerrant word of god, it suddenly becomes clear that all the problems with it aren’t your fault. The errors and contradictions are actually real errors and real contradictions. Only faith blinders make it seem otherwise. Faith says it is the word of god so the faithful must delude themselves into believing that is true.

Which is why there are so many differing doctrines. Which is why one branch hates the other branch. Man makes god in his own image.

So do I believe the religious are deluded? Yes, unfortunately, I do.

Does that make them my enemy? Not really. Not simply because they want to believe in god. Most churches are full of people that need the social connection it provides. The vast majority are satisfied with their weekly gathering, try to live by their shared principles, and go on living in the secular world maybe offended by some of it but not really trying too hard to change it.

There are those, however, who are not content with that level of belief. There are those who want to force everyone to abide by their beliefs and attempt to force the government to pass laws to promote their version of righteousness. These people want power. They want to tell you what you think and believe. And worse than that, they want to teach your children what to think and believe. These people are the enemy. They must be opposed.

To fail to do so would be a delusion of the worst kind.

Posted in wild guesses, interpretation, communication, prophet, hearing, religion, emotion, stroke | Print | 3 Comments »

21. May 2008 by Frank.

Bitter? No.

Angry? Yes.

I was standing by my mother’s side when she died. My sisters were crying, my dad was saying things that made no sense. My parent’s senior pastor was there and he was keeping quiet trying to stay out of the way. I myself kept silently begging my mother to just stop breathing and put an end to the ordeal. Her life was over, her mind had already left but her body didn’t know it. It was a horrible death but at least she wasn’t alone.

The only one not in attendance was god.

Well, the pastor claimed to have seen an angel waiting to take her away but I tend to discredit that without the use of narcotics. It cost $109,000 for my mother to die. It cost another $12,000 to bury her. God sure has a great way of calling his beloved children home. I mention these numbers because somehow none of the true believers has any sense of god being accountable for any of this. No one found it outrageous that they gave my mother $40,000 of painkillers because she was in total agony for three weeks. No, to them this was all the will of god.

If that’s the kind of friend god is then who needs Satan for anything?

What bothered me then and still does is the determination of all the religious family and friends to put a positive spin on her death, to somehow exonerate god so that his will to call her home wasn’t a bad thing despite the agony and the cost. God did not comfort my mother in the least, every time the drugs wore off she started screaming. How could anyone take solace in a god who wasn’t there?

On the news the other day they showed a brief video of a soldier who died of cancer who was misdiagnosed by the military doctors. He barely looked human. That took me back nearly twenty five years ago when my best friend died of colon cancer. He did not even resemble a human being, he looked like an alien from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The cancer ate him alive. They never called what happened to my mother cancer but it was essentially the same thing, pancreatic acids literally ate her alive from the inside.

My friend who died was a believer. He was a good man, studied his bible, and tried his best to live right. He was very much into healthy eating and living. He ran five miles every morning before coming to work. Never had a harsh word for anyone. By the time he was unable to work, however, he was angry, vicious, hostile and foul mouthed. The pain drove him into fits of rage against his closest friends and family. He told me I was worthless as a human being and if I didn’t get my act together I deserved to die.

But all of us true believers, including myself, tried to comfort ourselves by staying focused on god. We kept praying for a miracle even when it was obvious there was no possibility anything could save him. God didn’t comfort him any either. They used potent narcotics on him for months and months to stop him from screaming 24 hours a day. I have no idea what it cost, probably several hundreds of thousands.

My faith did not comfort me any. All the religious platitudes in the world couldn’t explain how something so horrifying could kill someone I loved. With my friend, my faith was devastated, but I didn’t give it up. I kept on making excuses for god. With my mother I had no faith at all. I didn’t pray. I didn’t beg. I didn’t plead. I didn’t make any excuses. I knew she was dying and I knew nothing was going to stop it or make it anymore pleasant. So I made peace with it so I could be strong for everyone else.

And I watched and listened to all the believing friends and family trying desperately to make the tragedy fit their Christian world view. I saw them doing the exact same things I had done years earlier. I heard them making the same excuses and rationalizations. I heard them trying to get comfort from a god who obviously had no comfort to give.

The bible says that god is the god of all comfort.

You could’ve fooled me.

At the funeral the preacher tried to put mom’s life into perspective even though it was obvious he barely knew her. I ended up in the same car with the funeral director and the two pastors of my mother’s church for the drive to the cemetery. You know what their idea of comfort was? They discussed their big golf game scheduled for the next morning. My mother’s funeral was nothing more than a job for them. Great holy men of god.

They finally got her tombstone in place last weekend. Ten months later.

And the believers are still making excuses.

Posted in interpretation, wild guesses, emotion, religion | Print | 1 Comment »

19. May 2008 by Frank.

Once you believe the bible is the inerrant word of God you assume everything it says is true whether or not you experience it that way. If the bible says those without god have no hope then undoubtedly such people have no hope. Doesn’t matter if they say they do, the bible says they don’t, so they don’t. No question, no debate. If the bible says so then that’s the way it is. Period.

The bible tells you that apart from god you can do nothing, that only things done in his name have any value. Since there are billions of people on earth who don’t believe in the god of the bible, that must mean that vast amounts of human effort around the world have no value whatsoever. No wonder so many fundamentalists can’t wait for the rapture and the tribulation to cleanse their planet from all the ungodly human activity. That’s probably what all the devastation in China and Myanmar are all about, those godless heathens deserve what they’re getting.

That’s already been proclaimed by some of the more radical fringe elements of Christianity. Just like it was for 9/11, just like it was for the tsunami. Just like it is every time there’s a disaster.

Someone told me the other day about an explosion that destroyed a lot of property and lives. If this person’s daily routine had not been interrupted, he would have been at the scene when it happened and would have died with them. But godly inspired coincidence kept him far enough away to save him. I’m glad it did but why wasn’t there any godly help holding the people who got killed away from the site? Were they godless? Were they terrible wicked sinners? Did they have no hope? Did their families have no hope? Did god want them to die?

My mother was a true believer. She trusted in god. She believed in faith, healing, love, forgiveness, heaven, and hell. She was trying to live her life pleasing to god. She came down very suddenly with severe pancreatitis. She suffered horribly for three weeks while several doctors admitted one by one that they couldn’t do anything to help her except give her massive doses of painkillers. Over $40,000 worth in three freaking weeks! All her religious friends were storming the gates of heaven praying for her everyday. But they eventually gave up hope when it was obvious even to them that she was about to die. They began reassuring one another with platitudes about how god was calling her home and how she would soon be in a better place and wouldn’t be suffering anymore. Frankly, that made me want to puke.

I would like to know why the god of hope would torture one of his own children to death with the equivalent of 3^rd degree burns of her internal organs? Why would he want such agony from a 74 year old woman? If he wanted to call her home why could he just take her peacefully while she slept? Does he get off on suffering? I always hear how much Jesus suffered on the cross. That was only a few hours with the full knowledge that he wasn’t going to even stay dead. How does that compare to three weeks of 3^rd degree internal burning?

How does that compare with being trapped for 5 days beneath the rubble after a severe earthquake? How does that compare with sickness and disease after the power is gone and sewage is backing up, and there isn’t any uncontaminated food, and your freaking government won’t let anyone help you because essentially they would be better off without you and thousands of others like you?

The world is a cruel, harsh, completely unfair place.

But the bible says it was created by Jesus for Jesus (John 1). God created this mess. He created all the forces that cause earthquakes, tsunamis, disease, sickness, death. He made the whole system. But then blamed us for destroying it with sin. But he created that, too. He created hell. He takes credit for creating Satan. But somehow all these terrible things that happen to us aren’t really his fault.

The problem of evil.

Let’s just take that for granted shall we?

Posted in interpretation, wild guesses, signs, emotion, religion | Print | 1 Comment »

17. May 2008 by Frank.

Something struck me very oddly last night. I was visiting my SDA friend and he had an SDA preacher on TV who was talking about baptism in Acts 19. This is where Paul meets some disciples and asks them if they have received the Holy Spirit. To which they replied, “We have not so much heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.”

I wasn’t the least bit interested in what the preacher was saying about baptism but that particular line leaped to my attention when he read it.

If you are familiar with standard Christian teachings you know that the Jews (or more accurately the Jewish leaders) did not accept Jesus and his teachings. The gospel of John begins by saying Jesus came unto his own and his own knew him not, they did not recognize nor receive him as their lord and god. They didn’t recognize their own god or his teachings. Let that sink in for a moment.

In the book of Acts, Jesus departs and the Holy Spirit shows up. If you follow the story of the early church you see that initially Christianity was strictly limited to the Jews. The disciples Paul encounters were followers of John the Baptist but they had never even heard that there was a Holy Ghost (Spirit). How can that be? Again, let that sink in for a moment.

This is standard Christian teaching, you hear it over and over and over again. I heard it so many times I never even thought about it, it just was. That’s the way most of the main doctrines are. You hear them stated constantly until they are so familiar you don’t even listen to them anymore. They just are.

But I’ve been away a long time now and I heard that one line loud and clear.

How is it that 4000 years of Jewish history and teachings that were a vital part of the culture did not prepare the Jews for either the arrival of Jesus or the Holy Spirit? How is it that anyone could say they had never even heard whether there was a Holy Spirit? How is it that priests, keepers of the faith, could be so blind that they couldn’t recognize their own god? How could they not know the manner in which he was coming to them?

There are all kinds of excuses for this. But do you ever really think about it? Have you ever really wondered how there could be so much ignorance of vital matters? Did it ever occur to you that perhaps no one was prepared or recognized what was going on because the Old Testament doesn’t teach any of these things?

The Old Testament god is not the god of love. He is the god of war and vengeance and swift retribution. He is the god of wrath and anger quick to destroy his own chosen people over and over again. He either directly causes or orders the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people (millions if you believe he wiped out the whole world with the flood). My SDA friend remarked he couldn’t understand how anyone could believe god wanted to punish anyone for their sins when clearly he offers forgiveness. And Jesus is love after all. Obviously he has blinders on when looking at the Old Testament.

The blinders are there for the New Testament, too. Jesus may have preached love and forgiveness but he also preached hell. You won’t find much about hell in the Old Testament. Why is that? Wasn’t it a common teaching? Nope. You won’t find much about the Holy Spirit. And you really won’t find much about Jesus, either, despite being told that the entire book is really all about him. If you look at both testaments without any preconceived interpretations you would have to admit that the Old Testament god doesn’t sound anything at all like the New Testament god.

I would suggest that is the real reason why Jesus’ own people didn’t recognize him. That’s the real reason that followers of John the Baptist didn’t know about the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t a common teaching. It wasn’t part of the doctrines of the time. Jesus being god wasn’t even part of the doctrines of the time, that wasn’t settled as a standard teaching until hundreds of years later.

There are thousands of denominations today with vastly differing doctrines; many of which completely exclude the other groups. There are so many interpretations that there is no consensus as to when Jesus is supposedly coming again. Christianity started as a haphazard collection of sects and it still is 2000 years later. Each little group with its own cherished doctrines and no idea how everyone else doesn’t recognize how they are right.

How could those men not know there was a Holy Spirit?

No one was teaching it up until that time.

Posted in communication, interpretation, wild guesses, hearing, religion | Print | 1 Comment »

16. May 2008 by Frank.

I used to teach Sunday school for adults. I had no desire to use anything other than the Bible because, after all, it was the word of god. What possible need could there be for anything else?

As it turned out, however, I was alone in my thinking. All my fellow students felt the need to study books which the author(s) had already done the studying for you. This way, not only did you find out what the proper Bible verses were to study, you also found out what you were supposed to think about them. Thus saving a lot of time and effort. And actual bible study.

So what did I do? I used the books as a guide to get a topic for the week. I presented just enough of the writer’s opinions to make it look like I was covering what they said. Then I proceeded to make an actual Bible study out of that topic in the hopes that someone might actually learn something from the Bible not just what someone said that it said.

I was not always successful.

Later on (much, much later), I ran into the same kind of mentality on an atheist blog I tried to contribute to. A Christian troll jumped all over me for making points strictly from the Bible. It seems I wasn’t qualified to make biblical observations because I hadn’t read the proper texts. It didn’t matter that I had studied the bible for 20 years and had read the entire New Testament some 85 times. It didn’t matter that I had read the entire bible cover to cover several times. I hadn’t read what the great Boola Boola had to say about it so obviously I knew nothing.

What I would like to know is why on earth I would need to read what anyone said the bible said when I have my own copy of the inerrant word of the living god right here in my grubby little hands. According to that very word I have an anointing from the Holy Spirit himself that will teach me everything I need to know from that selfsame word. Why would a combination like that need any help at all from any theologian or preacher?

Numbers 23 vs 19: “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?” That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? Like I mentioned previously, all God’s promises are yes and amen in Jesus. 1^stJohn 2 vs 27: “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.” Put it all together and you have to conclude you have no need of anyone to teach you.

So why does Christian apologetics even exist?

Why does any Christian feel the need to have books to explain the things of god to them?

For that matter why did god appoint preachers and teachers and prophets when his Holy Spirit is right there to lead you into all truth? Seriously, I questioned myself all the time, why was I a teacher, why did I think there was a need for me? Why is it that god’s children would much rather read what some self proclaimed man of god said that god’s word said instead of actually reading what god’s word said for themselves?

Can’t god speak clearly enough for himself?

Posted in education, religion | Print | 4 Comments »

14. May 2008 by Frank.

You can’t completely escape from religion. It’s next to impossible to go anywhere where there isn’t some kind of church nearby. There’s seven of them in less than one mile on the same road near here. I’m married to a wonderful woman who didn’t deconvert with me and who gets rather upset when I try to express myself on religious matters. So religion is still with me.

My best friend is a devout Seventh Day Adventist. I discuss religion with him every week and although I keep telling him he won’t like my conclusions, he somehow manages to insert god into everything I say. Family, friends, co-workers, no matter what the relationship there’s bound to be some religion mixed in there.

That can make it hard to speak your mind.

Not that I’m afraid of losing anybody but I don’t need the aggravation. I’ve got enough of that just dealing with the mundane things of working in retail and living in a community with at least two hundred churches.

So what’s a good atheist to do? That’s where the internet comes in. There is an abundance of people like me here in the virtual world. You can actually speak your mind without getting condemned and damned to the fiery flames of hell for all eternity. Because assuredly that is my fate for rejecting god.

I did not reject god on a whim even though my faith vanished in an instant. I gave it years of thought and serious study and consideration. Ultimately what convinced me that god wasn’t real was the bible itself. Because what it says and what happened in my life are completely different. Despite every effort on my part to make my experiences line up with what the bible says is true, I finally had to admit it couldn’t be done.

I had to admit prayer didn’t work. I had to admit that faith couldn’t move mountains. And I had to admit that Jesus did not stand by me despite his promise to never fail nor forsake me. You think a true believer could do any of that easily?

I don’t give up without a fight. So I studied fanatically trying to determine what possibly could have altered my thinking so radically. First the stroke disconnected me. Then I started staying away from church and consequently got away from guilt. Getting away from guilt made it so much easier to actually think about my doubts. Once you’re able to do that the faith blinders come off.

If you read the bible without them you see all its flaws.

And then you realize there is no god.

And then you realize you didn’t believe in him before so why did you ever start in the first place.

So it’s back to more studying.

And more questions.

With answers that actually make sense.

Posted in religion, stroke | Print | No Comments »

13. May 2008 by Frank.

^17” When I therefore was thus minded, did I use lightness? or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be yea yea, and nay nay? ¹⁸ But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay. ¹⁹ For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea. ²⁰ For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.”

That ’s Chapter 1 of 2^nd Corinthians in the King James Version. Notice what it says in verse 20 “ALL” the promises of God. Not some or a few. ALL. Every last one of them are yea (yes) and amen (so be it) in Christ. I mention this because it isn’t the least bit true according to most Christians.

“Sometimes God says, No.”

“Sometimes God says, Wait.”

“Sometimes God says, It’s not the right time.”

“Sometimes God says, It’s not my will.”

These excuses get tossed out with alarming frequency to explain why someone’s prayers aren’t answered. Then of course there’s the ever popular, “You didn’t have enough faith,” or the ultimate clincher, “You must have unconfessed sin in your life.” It doesn’t matter which excuse is used, they’re all wrong.

How can I say that? Well, take this promise for example: ¹⁹ “Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. ²⁰ For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” This is Jesus talking. This is a promise of God. If two Christians agree together about anything they ask it shall be done for them! What a wonderful promise! How could it not possibly work since all of God’s promises are yeas and amen in Jesus? There isn’t any valid excuse for it not to work. (Matthew 18 vs 19 - 20)

⁷ “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” (John 15 vs 7) Ah, here’s a bit of qualification. But nothing in it about no, wait, sin or faith. All you have to do is abide. To live in. How hard can that be?

Flip back to John 14. “¹⁰ Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. ¹¹ Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake. ¹² Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. ¹³ And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. “ Jesus flat out promises to do anything that you ask in his name. He also promises that his followers can do exactly what he did and even greater things than that. So since all of God’s promises are yes and amen in Jesus why don’t we ever see anyone doing any of those things? Why don’t we see people’s prayers being answered all the time every time? Even big time word of faith churches warn their people about anyone who claims these things are real and really work as stated. There’s always all sorts of extra qualifications.

Failure to meet any of them instantly nulls and voids anything Jesus said to the contrary.

Where do these qualifications come from? They aren’t biblical in and of themselves. Or if they are based on actual verses they have to be added to other verses in such a way as to make it seem that’s what God actually meant to say instead of what he actually said. So do Christians actually believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God? Not when it clearly can be proved it isn’t. But you can’t admit that. You have to rationalize things away while knowing they aren’t true by inventing all sorts of excuses. You can’t allow God to be wrong.

So you have to be wrong when it doesn’t work as stated. Despite his own words to the contrary, sometimes God says no.

This is too big a subject for one post so I will be returning to it again.

Posted in religion | Print | 1 Comment »

9. May 2008 by Frank.

The stroke disconnected the part of my brain that lets you have faith.  It was just gone in an instant.  I didn’t care that it was gone but I knew it had happened.  After the fog began lifting I began to realize that when it came to faith I had made an 180 degree turn.  I may not have cared but something that radical deserved some thought.

It deserved a lot of thought.

One of the first things I did was get a newer computer and get my first 56K dial-up internet service.  I began looking for stroke survivor groups.  I gradually discovered a number of survivors online and began learning that many of the effects of our strokes were very similar if not exactly the same.  Loss of emotion wasn’t unusual at all.  And what I call “The I Don’t Care Effect” was quite widespread.  So was alienation from family and friends.  Many people were struggling with their faith but it was mostly a matter of wondering why god had let this happen to them.  I never came across anyone who flat out felt their religion was gone.

I could write a book about all the effects of the stroke but I’m trying to stay focussed on religion for the purposes of this blog.

Like I mentioned previously, I was a member of two churches.  The entire amount of compassion and concern I got from those churches consisted of one visit from each pastor (at the same time no less - they competed to see who could say the best prayer!) and one visit by two families while I was in the hospital.  That was it.  No one ever called me, wrote a letter, paid a visit, or showed any interest at all outside of a church service.  While at church I was assured they were praying for me but I doubt that since no one could be bothered to even ask how I was doing.  I had been extremely active in both those churches teaching and preaching and filling in for the pastors.  But the most traumatic event in my life did not even make a blip on their radar.

This got my attention.  How could the love of god be real if this many of his people had no interest or campassion for one of their own?  I had seen this sort of thing before when my mother-in-law suffered a series of strokes that left her completely vegatative for 8 years.  She had been a member of the church for 35 years or more, only 2 or 3 of her friends from that church were ever around for support.  It was like they couldn’t deal with the situation so they chose to ignore it.  I found that disgusting.  They treated me the same way only they ignored me entirely.  But once again, I didn’t care.

I did, however, wonder how it was possible that someone (or more precisely, a group of someones) could claim to be filled with the love of god and show no love to one of their own who had had their life destroyed.

It began to occur to me that maybe I might be wrong in my understanding of god.  Maybe the things I was expecting weren’t accurate after all.  Maybe all that stuff I thought was still for us today really was over 2000 years ago.  Obviously something was wrong.

But for the first time I was able to think maybe it wasn’t something wrong with me, maybe it was something wrong with god.

Posted in religion, stroke | Print | 1 Comment »

9. May 2008 by Frank.

A pastor who is fond of telling everyone the specific day in 1957 that he became a Christian is also fond of answering serious religious questions with, “Don’t ask me to explain it.”

51 years of being a Bible student and teacher and he still can’t explain the Trinity, the virgin birth, speaking in tongues, or other controversies.  But he believes it because he knows God’s word is the inerrant word, it is the absolute truth.  Christianity takes faith because so many of its concepts make no rational sense.

The Old Testament is quite emphatic that there is only one true god, that all others are false impostors.  Yet somehow the one true god becomes three true gods in one in the New Testament.  Somehow this one spirit god has a son and a holy spirit who are equal to and the same as himself and are just as eternal as he is.  But they are only one god.  You can see why he doesn’t have an explanation for that, I didn’t either back in my gung ho days.  But I accepted it.  By faith, because that’s the only way you can accept it.

Somehow this god devises a plan to save his own creation from his own wrath by becoming one of them and sacrificing himself to himself.  In order to become one of us and be without sin he has to be born of a virgin because sin flows through the bloodlines of the fathers.  He has to die because there is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood.  And he has to rise again because our faith is in vain if he doesn’t.  Please don’t point out that God put the Tree of Knowledge in the garden himself and then told his innocent - ignorant - creatures to stay away from it.  Forget for a moment the fact that they had no idea of right from wrong and thus no idea what the consequences of their behavior might be.  Seriously, death came through sin and there was no sin yet so how did they know what it was?  And even then it still took in the neighborhood of nine hundred years for their bodies to figure out how to die.  Notice any scientific flaws with any of this?  It takes faith to believe these things.

Without it they’re just fairy tales.

I may look at this with some degree of sarcasm now but I was in complete agreement with the entire concept when I was a believer.  I even swallowed the whole confusing of languages at the Tower of Babel.  Theses people believed that God lived in the sky and that they could build a tower to reach his realm.  God didn’t like that so he came down and put a stop to it.  What makes no sense about this now is that we have skyscrapers the world over that make the Tower of Babel look like a one step step ladder and we still haven’t reached god’s realm.  And he stopped trying to stop us.

As long as you’re looking at Genesis go a little further and see how angels which are spirit beings can somehow mate with human females.  Apparently there is such a thing as angel sperm because these unions produced giants and mighty men.  Keep that in mind if you want an explanation of how a virgin birth could happen.  How can a spirit penis accomplish the same thing as a physical penis?  Is it really there?  Or - no, I’m being too offensive already.  All this stuff is in your Bible, I’m not exaggerating it to make a point.  It only makes sense if you read it with faith colored glasses.  Without them you can see how far out in LaLa Land these stories are. 

Christianity falls apart very easily if you look at it too closely.  If you actually question its foundations, if you actually look at what it actually says in the Bible with your faith blinders off, you can clearly see the multiple flaws and errors of logic.  How can something so precariously constructed stand so long?

Well, don’t ask me to explain that.

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8. May 2008 by Frank.

Do I think our brains are hard wired for faith?  Not necessarily.  Some probably more than others.  Some not at all.  Myself, I’m not entirely sure.

I had been exposed to Christianity as a child and again when I was a teenager but never really indoctrinated into it.  I was 25 when I hit the lowest point in my life due to overindulgence in drugs and alcohol.  A series of bizarre coincidences led to me go to church one morning and I heard my first end of the world sermon on Revelations.  Since I was in the middle of my own major crash and burn this appealed to me immensely.  Within a month I was convinced I was a sinner and headed straight to hell for all eternity but Jesus loved me and wanted to save me.  Appropriately enough, I got saved on Easter and was given my first Bible with the admonition to start reading at Matthew.

No one knew I was a voracious reader so no one guessed I would read the entire New Testament the very first week.  My personality, which I wouldn’t call compulsive but definitely obsessive, led me to jump in wholeheartedly.  I was on fire and the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders.  My drug and alcohol trangressions had been forgiven, I had a new life.  I was determined to become super-christian.

Within the second week I came into contact with church hypocracy and so-called attacks of Satan designed to discourage me.  It was funny how Satan was able to use church leaders to try to bring me back down to earth.  It was funny how all these “mature” (their own word) spiritual Christians didn’t think it was a good thing for me to be quite so spiritual myself.  It was also funny (looking back from much later on) how this little church destroyed itself within 6 months of my joining.  Seems maturity didn’t do anything for helping anyone to see an obviously false teaching as the pack of lies it really was.  I could see it and I was a brand new baby who only read through the NT once.  Thus began making excuses for church not being what the Bible said it was.

Satan had to become more and more powerful to be able to explain how mature Christians could so easily be deceived.  Essentially we were taught there was a demon behind every blade of grass.  I never believed this because there is no such teaching in the Bible but these people did.  There were so many enticements to sin that you needed a scorecard to keep track of them.  And in fact we were presented with a multi-page list of the known demonic causes of sin.  It eventually became clear that sin is more important in Christianity than anything else, even your salvation.

Because the promise to lure you in was the complete and total forgiveness and cleansing of your sin.  After they had you, complete and total became kind of and partial.  It turns out that even after being saved and being assured of your place in heaven, you’re still a sinner.  And that’s all you’ll ever be, just a sinner saved by grace.  It seems the sacrifice of Jesus was just the start of your salvation, not the be all/end all that it’s hyped to be.  In fact, no one is fully saved until the judgement and return of Jesus.

So there I found myself with the Bible telling me I was free of sin and a new creation in Christ with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit actually inhabitting me and my religion telling me yeah, but you’re still full of sin, you still want to sin, sin still rules your life, Satan is almost as powerful as God, and far more clever than you, and even though the Godhead inhabits you, you’re still going to choose sin almost evey time.

This did not make any sense whatsoever.  But being the all or nothing kind of guy I still am, I refused to give up.  I refused to really consider my doubts.  I refused to read or listen to anything that refuted my viewpoint.  But I kept being drawn to those very things and I did look and listen eventually.  I kept reading the Bible over and over trying to strengthen my faith but that had the exact opposite effect, I kept seeing more problems.

Not being a quitter, I was planning on entering the ministry full time.  Then the stroke disconnected my off switch.

What if all the problems I saw weren’t the fault of men because the Bible wasn’t actually the word of God?

What if there were no God?

Would that explain what happened next?

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