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I hope I'm not lost!

(25 posts) (15 voices)

Started 1 year ago by shesakeeper
Latest reply from Jabster

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shesakeeper
Member

I just sort of stumbled upon this site accidentally, and I must say, I quite enjoy it.

I guess I self-identify as Christian, but I always say Lutheran, both because that's the exact faith I was raised in (and was oddly a great fit for me) and because it confuses many Southern Baptists and Evangelicals ("Umm, are you even Christian? Like, have you been saved??), because they don't quite know enough about religious history :).
As for that, I'm in a weird position, because I admire the revolutionary nature of Jesus, and the things that he taught and said (if we were to take an historical view of the gospels). But of course, I very much doubt he was magic, and I am pretty sure he was not a demigod. But how to you accept the lessons of a prophet, but reject his god? I digress.
Point of this post, is to both say how amusing and actually intellectually stimulating this site is, and to ask if you know of any similar resources?

I'm in graduate school at the moment, so I'm not fond of reading books outside the bounds of assigned work, as I'm overloaded on reading in general. But I do want to find some articles and forum threads out there that are lighthearted but also make you think.

Aside from that, it wouldn't hurt to hear other opinions on how to deal with what may be the early stages of atheism or agnosticism. I wholeheartedly question things, but I still want something to believe in. That thing used to be the inherent goodness of humankind, but I'm starting to doubt that one as well. How did you deal with the transition from belief to skepticism? That's something I've just had on the back burner for several years and assumed I'd figure out later...

Thanks for reading, and thanks for some of your many insights on other threads! :)

Posted 1 year ago #
Nzo
Member

First off, welcome! I hope you can find the answers you're looking for here. As for any similar resources, there are many youtube channels dedicated to science/atheism on youtube; my favorites are philhellenes, theramintrees, qualiasoup, and evid3nc3.

I haven't really delved into any other forum websites for atheists, 'cuz I like this one, but I'm sure there are plenty out there! Enjoy your stay!

Now to two things about your post I'd like to respond to:

I admire the revolutionary nature of Jesus, and the things that he taught and said (if we were to take an historical view of the gospels).

Historically, no one can prove he existed. If he did, the teachings attributed to him were anything but revolutionary.

How did you deal with the transition from belief to skepticism?

It's not really a transition - you find out what's true, and you can't un-know it. There's no going back without a significant amount of intellect-numbing dissonance, and doublethink.

Edit: welcome

Posted 1 year ago #
FO
Member

Welcome in the filthy den of the godless, shesakeeper! =)
Expect intellectual challenging and the occasional flak.
Here respect and mercy are for people, not for ideas.

On my part, I think that Jesus said many good things (that others had said already), but also said that unbelievers will (deservedly!) be tortured for eternity.
That's probably one of the most horrible things I have ever heard in my life.

My only other godless lecture is http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ but watch out, PZ does not pull blows.

Posted 1 year ago #
Morpheus91
Member

Greetings, shesakeeper! Hope you find the answers you seek. :) Going to follow up FO's suggestion of Pharyngula by saying PZ brings up great points, particularly on science and social issues, but he might be a bit harsh if you're just looking into this sort of thing. A gentler area of discussion might be the Love, Joy, Feminism blog: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/

Posted 1 year ago #
Noelle
Member

Hi! I'm an ex-Lutheran. There's something about a tradition based in challenging authority (I'll take this here list of 95 things I hate about you and nail it to your fucking door. What you gonna do? Excommunicate me?) that encourages a flexible belief system and openness to new ideas. Lutherans tend to be fairly moderate politically and highly educated. Sure our founder was an anti-semitic bipolar disgruntled monk, but most Lutherans will embrace their history of crazy uncle Martin, rather than deny it. Another thing I liked about the Lutheran church is that it is so boring. Getting caught up in a moment and throwing your hands in the air to quiver in the ecstasy of the holy spirit is simply not done. Perhaps it's because Denmark and the other Scandinavian countries embraced the denomination and set the stage for its traditions so that flagrant displays of emotion are seen as squirmy and uncomfortable.

I found this site from another. If you'd like to visit it, go to: http://matthewpaulturner.net

Posted 1 year ago #
Len
Member

welcome :-) Have fun here.

I like this blog, http://realevang.wordpress.com/, which also points to: http://freethoughtblogs.com/alethianworldview

Posted 1 year ago #
FO
Member

@Noelle: (Hey, you got problems with bipolars!?) =P

Posted 1 year ago #
Noelle
Member

@ FO: Nope. I love 'em. I wonder though if Luther would've had a different life had lithium had been available in the 1500s.

Posted 1 year ago #
Gringa
Member

I would also recommend the Friendly Athiest blog - http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/

Posted 1 year ago #
Yoav
Member

Welcome shesakeeper

I guess I self-identify as Christian, but I always say Lutheran, both because that's the exact faith I was raised in (and was oddly a great fit for me) and because it confuses many Southern Baptists and Evangelicals

The christian label is fairly modern thing, until the 1970s people identified themselves by the specific denomination they belonged to like you do and it was considered appropriate for the Lutherans to hate the Baptists and for every one to hate the Catholics (in the speech that made frothy want to vomit JFK was trying to convince the protestants that a catholic can be a legitimate president). The idea of inventing a new label was part of the attempt to get all these groups, that traditionally hated each other at least as much as they hated the jews, to work together for the anti-abortion movement. I'll second all the blogs suggested above, you may also want to get in touch with some of the local atheist groups in your area (since you're in college your school may have an SSA chapter) as a way to discuss some of these issues.

Posted 1 year ago #
julie42
Member

Welcome! I don't really have a lot of atheist sources besides this site, but I'll go on Stumbleupon.com and stumble through the atheist/agnostic section.

Also, evid3nc3 which Nzo mentioned made a youtube documentary called "Why I am no longer a Christian" which I enjoyed quite a bit. It describes the deconversion process pretty well.

Dealing with the changes in belief can be a bit difficult, depending on the person and how important those beliefs were to begin with.
When I started questioning a lot of what I believed, I felt pressured by myself that I had to decide on these questions right away. But I started to realize that pressure came from a lifetime of believing that people who didn't believe in God went to hell and that if I'm asked the question "Where will you go when you die?" and I don't know the answer, there is something dreadfully wrong.

I think I was focusing too much on the question, "What do I believe?" when that was a really difficult question to answer. A better question is "What don't I believe?" You'll start realizing just how many things you've stopped believing and you'll probably know why you stopped believing in them, and that's helpful for understanding what criteria you have for believing in anything.

The most important moment in my transition was when I realized that there is absolutely nothing wrong with not knowing at the moment. (If you've stopped believing in hell, there's no reason to be afraid of it anymore). That gave me time to just relax about my beliefs. I didn't call myself Christian any more, but I didn't call myself an atheist either. I just didn't worry about it, but I still gathered up information along the way that persuaded me enough to officially call myself an atheist.

It was interesting because there was a lot of thought when I stopped being a Christian and a lot when I decided I was an atheist, but in between, I wasn't really thinking about it consciously. I guess I was just mulling over the ideas in the back of my head. "Huh...I don't believe in God, but I still seem to be a good person." "I don't believe in God, and I feel happy." "Good and bad things keep happening...just like before!"

Hope that helps.

Posted 1 year ago #
Caroline
Member

Jesus and science.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pUrsUORF4Y&feature=related

Posted 1 year ago #
Agathos
Member

Welcome shesakeeper!

I too have traveled a similar path to yourself though I began in a more charismatic form of Christianity.

The suggestions here have been good so far. I really, really enjoyed evid3nc3's deconversion videos. Extremely well done, and quite thorough. PZ is PZ, but always worth reading! Debunking Christianity can have some OK stuff though you do have to get over Lofton's martyrdom complex a bit.

For an extensive tour through the terrifying, maniacal, and ignorant underbelly of Christianity I would suggest the usually entertaining Tumblr http://christiannightmares.tumblr.com/

(and if I may be self-indulgent for a moment: there's a little blog at the corner of the blogosphere http://scotteriology.wordpress.com/ that is light-hearted, has a lot of posts on theology and biblical studies, and from what I hear, has an extremely good-looking and affable fellow writing the posts... and has also been linked to on the main page here several times!)

Posted 1 year ago #
shesakeeper
Member

Thanks you guys! This will certainly make my weekend a little more entertaining! I'll look over some of the stuff and maybe get back to some of you on the specific suggestions. :)

@Noelle: Gotta love Martin Luther. Many of the things about Lutheranism are what made church fun. In fact, I own a shirt that has his picture on it and says "Luther is my Homeboy" and a pair of shorts from the online ELCA store that says "Left Behind" on my left butt cheek (mocking the rapture-based series from several years ago, of course). Being Lutheran I think, is what made it easier to go to church. I'm naturally inquisitive, and want to learn and question everything I can, and when you ask your pastor a question, and he says "I don't know, let's look it up (and doesn't pull out a bible, but googles it), it really gives you a sense that we should always be questioning authority, and never taking anyone's word for it. That's one of my favorite lessons from Luther, actually, was that the Bible should be translated into German, so that the laity could read what it said for themselves, rather than taking the clergy's word as final. Being raised in a church where it didn't matter exactly what you believed, because we all had a slightly different take on it and held discussions during Sunday school meant that it isn't a big disconnect for me not to believe in hell or in the magical properties of baptism or communion. I was even able to convince my pastor that logically, if we believed in Jesus, there was no way we could believe in hell. Plus, the food was always amazing.

@Julie42: Thanks, that does help. There are a whole host of things I've never really believed, and it's hard to really parse what you do believe when you have questioned a lot of it and are posed with that question. I don't quite consider myself a Christian anymore, mostly because I don't like the connotation (imagine that!), but I don't feel right about rejecting something that was a defining (and good) part of my childhood. I've always advocated for the rights of atheists or those with differing belief systems (mostly the right to live in a secular, judgment free society), but I guess I just found it easier to do that as an "insider." I guess I shouldn't feel so pressured to accept a label, and it seems I'm in that "in-between" stage, where I don't really care one way or another, I just want to live my life the best way I can.

@Agathos: I'm certain that wordpress blog author is astoundingly handsome. How can an intelligent man not be? :)

Thanks again for your help, guys!

Posted 1 year ago #
shesakeeper
Member

ps, @Yoav, thanks for the history lesson! I love learning new things! :)

And Caroline, that sketch is hilarious!

Posted 1 year ago #
Caroline
Member

LOL! Sure it is!

It has a lot of deep implicances! but always within the marvelous frame of humor.

I´m still walking the path to skepticism, that means: I´m not reasonable enough to give you a real welcome, but nevertheless...

Welcome!!!

Posted 1 year ago #
Noelle
Member

Yes, I miss the food. I bet there are deists/agnostics/atheists/etc who stick it out to hang with friends and family and eat on Sundays. My nephew's getting baptized this Easter, with Easter dinner to follow the service. Yum. And I'm glad I don't have to cook or clean up. I gave up regular church going when I started college, due to time constraints. I like sleeping in on the weekend too much to restart. So my children have no idea what this religion thing is about. My son has ASD (autism spectrum) and doesn't care about customs and emotions or anything as abstract as religion. My daughter is 5 and is a sensitive little thing and a relentless question asker. She just learned the truth about Santa and the Easter bunny. I don't know how she'll process the some people really really believe in stuff that we don't business.

What makes you say Jesus was a revolutionary?

Posted 1 year ago #
Francesco
Member

Hi and welcome to the site!

Posted 1 year ago #
shesakeeper
Member

I think Jesus was a revolutionary (and not saying that he definitely existed or that he wasn't saying the exact same things others were saying, it's just that he got people to listen to him on the "I'm the Messiah" front) mostly because of the ideas that he brought in regarding the "us vs. them" mentality that many of the Jews had taken on at the time. You have Pharisees walking around being general dicks to everyone they deemed less worthy (much like clergy and zealous church-goers today) and he basically in no uncertain terms told them that they were dicks and that the people they were looking down on were more worthy of heaven than they were.
Granted I tend to follow the "religion is the opiate of the masses" philosophy, and that looking forward to an afterlife is a way of letting the masses feel superior in some way to those who have more money and power than them while still keeping them in their place. BUT the point still remains that the people that are so religious and "right with god" or whatever are basically worthless if they treat others like crap.
I always think the new testament is fun to study. The parables are good moral lessons, and all the bits about his birth and death are fun to analyze as extra bits thrown in by the writers as a way of relating Jesus to the old testament and trying to give evidence that he really was the messiah foretold in the old testament. I just wish more people saw it that way, more of like Aesop's fables, where they're moral lessons that we should try and live by, rather than focusing on all the fire and brimstone coming from revelations.

This Easter will be interesting, though, because this will be my first time not participating in maundy Thursday, good Friday, or Easter services, because I'm so far away from home now in graduate school. My parents are coming to visit me, so I'm not sure how we're going to handle the whole church thing. I guess that'll be an adventure!

Random question, I know I can wiki it, but I guess I'd rather have someone who is one explain it, what exactly is a Deist? Something I remember studying in undergrad, but all I really took from it was that those that tended to be deists were those philosophers and great minds that were afraid of being excommunicated or killed for heresy if they didn't admit that "god did it all, but we're just explaining how he did it," so I guess I don't really know what it means in terms of belief vs. skepticism.

Posted 1 year ago #
Jabster
Member

The problem is that however you dress Jesus up his number one message, and most important in terms of its impact, is either you believe in me or you end up in hell for eternity - all the other parts pale in comparison to that. So you can say that people 'right with god' are worthless to you but that's not what the Christian god thinks, indeed I will go to hell regardless of how 'nice' I am and the believer will go to heaven.

Edit: Regarding the "... it's just that he got people to listen to him on the "I'm the Messiah" front) mostly because of the ideas that he brought in regarding the "us vs. them" mentality that many of the Jews had taken on at the time." the history of Christanity shows the the idea of 'us vs. them' is strong and remains so today. A relgion is defined by the actions of it believers.

Posted 1 year ago #
Elemenope
Moderator

Random question, I know I can wiki it, but I guess I'd rather have someone who is one explain it, what exactly is a Deist?

A person who believes in an existing but non-interventionist God. Usually, this God just kicks off the universe and then takes a six billion year break. A common mutation of liberal Christian belief about three hundred years ago, much less common these days.

Posted 1 year ago #
shesakeeper
Member

Thanks Elemenope!

Jabster, that confuses me. I never understood why that was a major principle in people's belief systems. I was never taught that, and I've not really found a point where that was specifically stated (Granted, I've never read revelations, because eff that book, but let me know if there is a passage somewhere that I don't know about, because I will never claim expertise in the matter :) ).
Basically I was taught that it doesn't matter if you believe in Jesus or not, the point of Jesus was that he "saved us all from the fires of Hell." I was basically taught (and repeated every Sunday for at least 18 years of my life) that Jesus took all of the sins of the world (everyone, past and present and not just the people that "accept him into their hearts" or whatever) and went down to hell, and then basically dumped the sins and closed the gates of hell. So I have always understood it that no one is going to hell, no matter what, and that the whole point of Jesus was saving everybody, whether they believe in him or not. (Which got rid of all those pesky "what happens to unbaptized babies or people who never had a chance to hear about Jesus?" questions, because it didn't matter, heaven for everybody!)

I guess that's one of the weird disconnects that I have from most people who cling to Christianity. I don't understand where they get the idea that Jesus said "Believe in me or go to Hell." Where did they get that? Who brought that about? How is that even remotely moral? [These can be understood as both rhetorical and questions I fully invite anyone to answer, because I really don't get it.]

Posted 1 year ago #
Kodie
Member

Hi, shesakeeper. I've never been a Christian, but based on what I have learned around here in the past few years, it seems the whole or partial creation of your belief is at once acknowledging the immorality of the ultimatum version of god (at least as you describe it), but going forth anyway as if there's still a Jesus to care about or celebrate.

What will make Christianity palatable to people who are having doubts and troubled over this part? Make it sound like it's not so bad.

Cherry-picking.

Once you acknowledge cherry-picking, you acknowledge you just think what you want to think - it may not describe a real god (if we pretend he is real, I will pretend), it just makes you feel better. As far as I can tell, if there is a real Christian god (or any god), he's unknowable, so everything you've learned is what makes it attractive for you to stick with. That, and the community built up around it. You feel better because it's not just you asking these questions and accepting these answers. Anyone who belongs to any sect of, for example, Christianity, has found a community which centers around an interpretation of the text of the bible that the group agrees upon. Some people don't have the same problem with the morality of a hell-sending god as you do, and would not acknowledge you as a true Christian. Then you might say, they are not a true Christian, since the god you know to be true does not send anyone to hell.

Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to.

Posted 1 year ago #
shesakeeper
Member

That makes sense. I mean, why did Christianity end up with the bible in its current form anyway? A big group of people just picked out the books that sounded the best to them and didn't say anything too far against what they already believed. Makes sense that people would do that with other aspects of religion as well.
That's a really good way to put it, though. I mean, I think what I want to think about certain things, and I guess I can't be upset when other people have completely different views on the same thing. I do tend to want to pick out all the parts that sound good and ignore pieces that don't quite fit with that.

Posted 1 year ago #
Jabster
Member

"I never understood why that was a major principle in people's belief systems."

Seriously? The Bible seems pretty clear on this stuff so just use google for salvation + Jesus to find some relevant information/passages. It may not have much effect in the day-to-day outlook of the average believer but that's what your faith says.

Posted 1 year ago #