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My relegation to agnosticism
Well, during the last couple of weeks or the last month or so and for a variety of reasons, I have fortunately or unfortunately (depending on perspective) started having doubts and become relegated -unwillingly- to an awkwardly agnostic position, with regard to Christianity.
Given my extensive posting about Christianity here, I at least owe to share these considerations.
This thread is simply an outline of some reasons for it; anyone who is not interested can stop reading here.
I will quote some meditations that I wrote elsewhere:
This is not all, but simply a short excerpt of some of my thoughts. I have many others, and even if these thoughts were to change, there would be too much else to write here. One notable thought is this: that Christianity itself posites a truth claim which it cannot live up to.. it posites that the Christian God is the absolute truth in a literal sense, and so, because that is the case, this dogmatism results in being forced to recognize the problem with any real truth which we have knowledge of, which contradicts Christianity; because then we supposedly have the truth which we must respect (from science for instance) because all truth can only be from God; and the truth which we must also respect (the absolute truth of Christian dogma).Well, one thing is this.. which simply started with a consideration. Consider the present for a while: what do you see in the present world? We see a world full of what by Christian standards is evil, we see humanity and animals dwelling in a process of organic death, where the weak are indifferently killed and the strong survive.. natural selection and acquiring of new traits to survive and feed on others, the very process by which evolution suggests we and all other things came to be.
We see a near infinite universe which extends billions and billions of years back into the past, with everything ending up in utter destruction, whether it gets swallowed in a black hole or a nearby sun. And then.. are we supposed to believe all of this evil comes from original sin? Doesn't that just seem like an excuse, a denial of reality, an escape from the present reality? If we say it's just because some evil choice by a human in the distant past, then we have projected the root of the present into that distant past evil choice.. and if we say God will make all things right at judgement day, then we have projected justice into the distant future..
we can never go into the past to check if the world was ever different, and we can never go into the future to check if it will change. In other words, because Christianity predicts another universe, we make up excuses for why the universe we see isn't that universe, excuses which are unfalsifiable. We make a "double" of the world, rather than accept that -this- is what the world is.
The very process which we were created by itself involves death and what Christianity certainly considers "evil" (evolution, survival of the fittest). Lust, envy, hate, murder, and so on, are all things that are built into us from the beginning by natural selection. It seems to be me that there is too much so-called "evil" which is out of our hands, to claim that this universe is created by a God who is on the same time "good" and still is the creator of this universe. Venomous snakes, blood sucking insects that infect and kill people with malaria, indifferent climates that kill everything living, evolution, death everywhere, a big cosmic infinity of destruction.. which could only be created by God - but that isn't the case if he is omnibenevolent.
Christianity seems to predict another universe.. a good little cosy planet, with an unshakable foundation and an instant creation of man and animals in perfect harmony. That was certainly the view that the Church Fathers had of the universe; and any other view was even condemned as heresy, along many other things. I just remembered reading Origen, that the "Mosaic account of the universe" says that it's "no more than 10,00 years old", unlike "pagan views" which claim it to be "eternal". Well, doesn't it seem that the "pagan" view was closer to the truth, by human standards? The universe's age would seem to be an infinity, and even it's size. What Christianity predicts does not seem to be the sort of "deistic" universe, in which God is just a "distant creator" who merely "starts evolution"; it predicts rather the directly intervening God, who does not seem to have created this world. Evolution of animals killing and feeding off each other to even survive and to even evolve.. A seemingly random and indifferent process which just kills and kills for eternity.. destruction for millions of years before we even came.
Theres also the question of the impossible justice of God.. the God of the Old and New testaments seems to be simply lethal to humanity. God, being utterly transcendent, is impossible to please by anything else than total subjugation; and even one sin, and we are supposedly going to suffer for a half eternity. The Old Testament is filled of commands with people to kill, even a child who curses his parents, or someone who has sex outside of marriage, should be stoned to death. Even a father should stone his own child for cursing.
And only the killing of Jesus, only the deeds of God himself, is worth anything.. Whatever we do is worthless, so we are just imputed to Jesus and his death. It seems like creation and we, are just pointless then; because we cannot do anything on our own, except rely on God anyway. Creation, indeed, is simply pointless then.
Another thing is that, if the Christian God was truly omnipotent, I cannot bring myself to accept that he doesn't say something to me or do something, to convince me not to doubt. I really have prayed that God gave me some reason not to doubt.. but all I experience compared to that is total silence; total abandonment of me and the rest of creation. Total absence... at best, I can feel a presence and a spiritual mode of consciousness, but not one that I can definitely say must be "the omnipotent Christian God". It could be a spirit, a lesser god, or a self-delusion; any explanation goes. It is not warranted to say it is an omnipotent deity. My spiritual experience is not enough on itself to say that the Christian God is the case. This also signifies another problem, which is really the problem that practically no warrant can justify the idea of a revelation from an omnipotent deity; something much lesser than that can explain the same facts; like when an angel reveals itself to Moses, or some natural phenomena occured in the bible stories, it was enough to convince back then, but today even humans could do similar things; and if not humans, then some lesser spirits, lesser gods, or other things. The warrant for explaining it with an omnipotent deity is not there.
This summarizes what I mean with the "absence":If God is omnipotent, the sort of things he could do to convince a waverer are limitless. The argument that God wants us to have a choice about following him, rather than overwhelming us, makes little sense. A person who argues that God would not or cannot intervene supernaturally to provide an unbeliever with evidence is getting perilously close to deism, where God is supposed to have created the universe and then stepped back, no longer intervening in it.
A Christian might argue that there's a limit to how much evidence God can give before negating our free choice. C.S. Lewis says, for example, that God "cannot ravish, he must woo". I'd reply that, correctly understood, the claims of Jesus on a believer are so huge that they demand miraculous evidence. If you doubt this, consider what it might mean to "Take up your cross and follow me", or how a person who really feared only God and not men might behave. There's also the inconsistency of God's dealings with people, if he truly wants everyone to come to know him. The Bible itself refers to some people, such as St Paul, who have very convincing conversion experiences. Was St Paul's free will unimportant to God? How about the salvation of people who don't have an experience like St Paul's?Some more reasons are outlined here: Why I Am Not a Christian (2006) by Richard Carrier and what's more, Nietzsche's psychological analysis of "otherworldliness" and ressentiment in various forms of it, including Platonism and Christianity, has dealt another strike to my faith in Christianity. Losing my religion: thoughts on leaving Christianity which I quoted from above, echoes my thoughts too.1. God is Silent
If God wants something from me, he would tell me. He wouldn't leave someone else to do this, as if an infinite being were short on time. And he would certainly not leave fallible, sinful humans to deliver an endless plethora of confused and contradictory messages. God would deliver the message himself, directly, to each and every one of us, and with such clarity as the most brilliant being in the universe could accomplish. We would all hear him out and shout "Eureka!" So obvious and well-demonstrated would his message be. It would be spoken to each of us in exactly those terms we would understand. And we would all agree on what that message was. Even if we rejected it, we would all at least admit to each other, "Yes, that's what this God fellow told me."[2]
Excuses don't fly. The Christian proposes that a supremely powerful being exists who wants us to set things right, and therefore doesn't want us to get things even more wrong. This is an intelligible hypothesis, which predicts there should be no more confusion about which religion or doctrine is true than there is about the fundamentals of medicine, engineering, physics, chemistry, or even meteorology. It should be indisputably clear what God wants us to do, and what he doesn't want us to do. Any disputes that might still arise about that would be as easily and decisively resolved as any dispute between two doctors, chemists, or engineers as to the right course to follow in curing a patient, identifying a chemical, or designing a bridge. Yet this is not what we observe. Instead, we observe exactly the opposite: unresolvable disagreement and confusion. That is clearly a failed prediction. A failed prediction means a false theory. Therefore, Christianity is false.
Typically, Christians try to make excuses for God that protect our free will. Either the human will is more powerful than the will of God, and therefore can actually block his words from being heard despite all his best and mighty efforts, or God cares more about our free choice not to hear him than about saving our souls, and so God himself "chooses" to be silent. Of course, there is no independent evidence of either this remarkable human power to thwart God, or this peculiar desire in God, and so this is a completely "ad hoc" theory: something just "made up" out of thin air in order to rescue the actual theory that continually fails to fit the evidence. But for reasons I'll explore later, such "added elements" are never worthy of belief unless independently confirmed: you have to know they are true. You can't just "claim" they are true. Truth is not invented. It can only be discovered. Otherwise, Christianity is just a hypothesis that has yet to find sufficient confirmation in actual evidence.
Be that as it may. Though "maybe, therefore probably" is not a logical way to arrive at any belief, let's assume the Christian can somehow "prove" (with objective evidence everyone can agree is relevant and true) that we have this power or God has this desire. Even on that presumption, there are unsolvable problems with this "additional" hypothesis. Right from the start, it fails to explain why believers disagree. The fact that believers can't agree on the content of God's message or desires also refutes the theory that he wants us to be clear on these things. This failed prediction cannot be explained away by any appeal to free will--for these people have chosen to hear God, and not only to hear him, but to accept Jesus Christ as the shepherd of their very soul. So no one can claim these people chose not to hear God. Therefore, either God is telling them different things, or there is no God. Even if there is a God, but he is deliberately sowing confusion, this contradicts what Christianity predicts to be God's desire, which entails Christianity is the wrong religion. Either way, Christianity is false.
So this theory doesn't work. It fails to predict what we actually observe. But even considering atheists like me, this "ad hoc" excuse still fails to save Christianity from the evidence. When I doubted the Big Bang theory, I voiced the reasons for my doubts but continued to pursue the evidence, frequently speaking with several physicists who were "believers." Eventually, they presented all the logic and evidence in terms I understood, and I realized I was wrong: the Big Bang theory is well-supported by the evidence and is at present the best explanation of all the facts by far. Did these physicists violate my free will? Certainly not. I chose to pursue the truth and hear them out. So, too, I and countless others have chosen to give God a fair hearing--if only he would speak. I would listen to him even now, at this very moment. Yet he remains silent. Therefore, it cannot be claimed that I am "choosing" not to hear him. And therefore, the fact that he still does not speak refutes the hypothesis. Nothing about free will can save the theory here.
Even when we might actually credit free will with resisting God's voice--like the occasional irrational atheist, or the stubbornly mistaken theist--the Christian theory is still not compatible with the premise that God would not or could not overcome this resistance. Essential to the Christian hypothesis, as C.S. Lewis says, is the proposition that God is "quite definitely good" and "loves love and hates hatred." Unless these statements are literally meaningless, they entail that God would behave like anyone else who is "quite definitely good" and "loves love and hates hatred." And such people don't give up on someone until their resistance becomes intolerable--until then, they will readily violate someone's free will to save them, because they know darned well it is the right thing to do. God would do the same. He would not let the choice of a fallible, imperfect being thwart his own good will.
I know this for a fact. Back in my days as a flight-deck firefighter, when our ship's helicopter was on rescue missions, we had to stand around in our gear in case of a crash. There was usually very little to do, so we told stories. One I heard was about a rescue swimmer. She had to pull a family out of the water from a capsized boat, but by the time the chopper got there, it appeared everyone had drowned except the mother, who was for that reason shedding her life vest and trying to drown herself. The swimmer dove in to rescue her, but she kicked and screamed and yelled to let her die. She even gave the swimmer a whopping black eye. But the swimmer said to hell with that, I'm bringing you in! And she did, enduring her curses and blows all the way.
Later, it turned out that one of the victim's children, her daughter, had survived. She had drifted pretty far from the wreck, but the rescue team pulled her out, and the woman who had beaten the crap out of her rescuer apologized and thanked her for saving her against her will. Everyone in my group agreed the rescue swimmer had done the right thing, and we all would have done the same--because that is what a loving, caring being does. It follows that if God is a loving being, he will do no less for us. In the real world, kind people don't act like some stubborn, pouting God who abandons the drowning simply because they don't want to be helped. They act like this rescue swimmer. They act like us.
So we can be certain God would make sure he told everyone, directly, what his message was. Everyone would then know what God had told them. They can still reject it all they want, and God can leave them alone. But there would never be, in any possible Christian universe, any confusion or doubt as to what God's message was. And if we had questions, God himself would answer them--just like the Big Bang physicists who were so patient with me. Indeed, the very fact that God gave the same message and answers to everyone would be nearly insurmountable proof that Christianity was true. Provided we had no reason to suspect God of lying to all of us, Christianity would be as certain as the law of gravity or the color of the sky. That is what the Christian hypothesis entails we should observe--for it is what a good and loving God would do, who wanted us all to set right what has gone wrong. And since this is not what we observe, but in fact the exact opposite, the evidence quite soundly refutes Christianity.
Despite this conclusion, Christians still try to hold on to their faith with this nonsense about free will--but they haven't thought it through. Meteorologists can disagree about the weather forecast, but they all agree how weather is made and the conditions that are required for each kind of weather to arise. And they agree about this because the scientific evidence is so vast and secure that it resolves these questions, often decisively. It can't be claimed that God has violated the free will of meteorologists by providing them with all this evidence. And yet how much more important is salvation than the physics of weather! If God wants what Christianity says he wants, he would not violate our free will to educate us on the trivial and then refuse to do the same for the most important subject of all. Likewise, if a doctor wants a patient to get well, he is not vague about how he must do this, but as clear as can be. He explains what is needed in terms the patient can understand. He even answers the patient's questions, and whenever asked will present all the evidence for and against the effectiveness of the treatment. He won't hold anything back and declare, "I'm not going to tell you, because that would violate your free will!" Nor would any patient accept such an excuse--to the contrary, he would respond, "But I choose to hear you," leaving the doctor no such excuse.
There can't be any excuse for God, either. There are always disagreements, and there are always people who don't follow what they are told or what they know to be true. But that doesn't matter. Chemists all agree on the fundamental facts of chemistry. Doctors all agree on the fundamental facts of medicine. Engineers all agree on the fundamental facts of engineering. So why can't all humans agree on the fundamental facts of salvation? There is no more reason that they should be confused or in the dark about this than that chemists, doctors, and engineers should be confused or in the dark.
The logically inevitable fact is, if the Christian God existed, we would all hear from God himself the same message of salvation, and we would all hear, straight from God, all the same answers to all the same questions. The Chinese would have heard it. The Native Americans would have heard it. Everyone today, everywhere on Earth, would be hearing it, and their records would show everyone else in history had heard it, too. Sure, maybe some of us would still balk or reject that message. But we would still have the information. Because the only way to make an informed choice is to have the required information. So a God who wanted us to make an informed choice would give us all the information we needed, and not entrust fallible, sinful, contradictory agents to convey a confused mess of ambiguous, poorly supported claims. Therefore, the fact that God hasn't spoken to us directly, and hasn't given us all the same, clear message, and the same, clear answers, is enough to prove Christianity false.
Just look at what Christians are saying. They routinely claim that God is your father and best friend. Yet if that were true, we would observe all the same behaviors from God that we observe from our fathers and friends. But we don't observe this. Therefore, there is no God who is our father or our friend. The logic of this is truly unassailable, and no "free will" excuse can escape it. For my father and friends aren't violating my free will when they speak to me, help me, give me advice, and answer my questions. Therefore, God would not violate my free will if he did so. He must be able to do at least as much as they do, even if for some reason he couldn't do more. But God doesn't do anything at all. He doesn't talk to, teach, help, or comfort us, unlike my real father and my real friends. God doesn't tell us when we hold a mistaken belief that shall hurt us. But my father does, and my friends do. Therefore, no God exists who is even remotely like my father or my friends, or anyone at all who loves me. Therefore, Christianity is false.
The conclusion is inescapable. If Christianity were true, then the Gospel would have been preached to each and every one of us directly, and correctly, by God--just as it supposedly was to the disciples who walked and talked and dined with God Himself, or to the Apostle Paul, who claimed to have had actual conversations with God, and to have heard the Gospel directly from God Himself. Was their free will violated? Of course not. Nor would ours be. Thus, if Christianity were really true, there would be no dispute as to what the Gospel is. There would only be our free and informed choice to accept or reject it. At the same time, all our sincere questions would be answered by God, kindly and clearly, and when we compared notes, we would find that the Voice of God gave consistent answers and messages to everyone all over the world, all the time. So if Christianity were true, there would be no point in "choosing" whether God exists anymore than there is a choice whether gravity exists or whether all those other people exist whom we love or hate or help or hurt. We would not face any choice to believe on insufficient and ambiguous evidence, but would know the facts, and face only the choice whether to love and accept the God that does exist. That this is not the reality, yet it would be the reality if Christianity were true, is proof positive that Christianity is false.
This means my enthusiastic advocacy of Christianity here is over for now, that I am humbled, and no longer have any certainties, whether I like it or not. I would be lying if I said I had certainties at this point.. and even by Christian standards, the Old Testament says not to bear false witness.
What I tried to do on the apricity was really overcome my own doubts by facing some challenge from non-Christians. It didn't challenge me enormously though; my doubts come from my own consideration and thought.
I had a good reason to keep defending Christianity, though.
Jessep (Jack Nicholson): You want answers?
Kaffee (Tom Cruise): I think I'm entitled to them.
Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I want the truth!
Jessep: You can't handle the truth!
-- A Few Good Men
If it's not the absolute truth, then I know enough to know that reality is meaningless and indifferent much like we observe evolution, this eternal process of death and "evil", to be, and this cold, infinite universe. There is then no absolute foundation for truth, morality and above all, meaning, which means I will have to find a way to deal with that. Which I am sure is something most people don't want to face, not even atheists, who live on in their God delusion. The sheer dread and angst associated with first coming to realize this nihilism, is enough emotional reason not to face it, not to stare into the abyss, in fear of dying inside from the truth.
THE MADMAN—-Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!”—As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?—Thus they yelled and laughed.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
“How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us—for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. “I have come too early,” he said then; “my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves.
It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: “What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?”
Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.]
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Originally Posted by Lutiferre
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