How A Christian Lost His Faith
I thought it only appropriate for my first TA blog to be a story of how I lost my faith. Let it be a lesson on how to reason with the unreasonable. First a little background on where I came from.
I was raised in a Christian fundamentalist home. My uncle is a Petroleum Engineer which he thinks qualifies him in the area of Geology as well. I was raised to believe the Earth is 6,000 years old and God created the Heavens and Earth in 6 literal days. I believed this well into my 20s. I only lost my faith ~2 years ago and I am now 29 years old. I am partly embarrassed to admit that but I only learned about Evolution from people who were apposed to Evolution. Something I never would have done with the Bible but with Evolution it made sense at the time.
I was so immersed into this dogma and delusion that I actually decided I wanted to be a part of it. I was going to start blogging on Creation and stumping the top Evolution myths. I also decided that once I had built a large base on evolution blogs I would turn it into a book. I first needed to learn the top arguments for Evolution. I looked through AiG and ICR.org and finally made the greatest decision of my life. I wanted to hear it directly from the horses mouth. So I Google'd it!
What really got me was a link to a documentary that covered Biogeography. Specifically, the evolution of Marsupials. It was brilliant. Discovery was made in South America of early Marsupials which only exist in Australia. A prediction was made that fossils would one day be found in Antarctica of all places. Then 10 years later, a treasure troll of Marsupial fossils were found in Antarctica. This obviously did not fit with the Global Flood model! It was just enough to spark my interest. I started with the obvious questions. How did the Eye evolve? What about the heart? Or the ears or nose? Everything made sense. It suddenly dawned on me that I was only learning about Evolution from people who were admittedly apposed to it. After that, I read Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion" and I could no longer believe in the Supernatural.
Science softened me up and logic killed every bit of faith I had left. I have since then researched the answers to many of the arguments from a Creation side and found them all to be false or blatant lies. I can no longer stand my children being indoctrinated into religion and see it as a form of child abuse. I now see the problems caused by religion and cringe any time I hear a politician talk about God or Jesus. I cannot hear religion discussed without fighting back the chuckles. I do not have a problem with the liberal Christians. The ones that believe Jesus died for their sins but think the rest is just the ranting of a book. To them I wish the best and I hope you make it to Heaven. For the rest however, I think they are damaging my country. I believe they are raising their children into a hateful religion built to spread like a virus.
To the fundamentalists I ask:
• Would you learn about the bible from an Atheist? Then why learn about Evolution from a Creationist?
• Why was God so involved in a time of desert nomads who still believed the Earth was flat and disappear when we had real questions to ask?
• If God can heal the sick, why can't he grow back limbs as well? Is this beyond God's power?
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Comment by Blake Buettner on July 5, 2011 at 2:14pm -
Thanks for sharing your story, a true enlightenment. The thirst for knowledge can indeed be a slippery slope. Welcome!
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Comment by Moral Atheist on July 5, 2011 at 3:24pm -
Thank you. Now the question I wrestle with, is how to get others to do the same.
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Comment by Steve on July 5, 2011 at 3:29pm -
Congratulations on seeing the light
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Comment by Noodly James on July 5, 2011 at 8:57pm
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I'm always relieved to see that my science rants could, in theory, have some effect. Not in your case ,mind you, but in theory. I was raised "open-to-free-thought" in a highly educated and liberal household and obviously you don't jump into religion from that start. Religion holds a sick fascination for me because I have no basis for comparison.
You will REALLY enjoy these videos. http://www.youtube.com/user/Evid3nc3
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Comment by Noodly James on July 5, 2011 at 9:01pm
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Oh. FYI, god (in the form of christian prayer by someone else) has actually been shown to have a negative correlation with the healing of sick people (well, cardiac patients).
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Comment by Derek on July 5, 2011 at 9:47pm -
That's a great story.
One thing you said:
To the fundamentalists I ask:
• Would you learn about the bible from an Atheist?Actually, you would be surprised how literate atheists are on the bible. Maybe I'm biased here but in general I've found atheists to be more knowlegable than religious people on the buybull.
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Comment by Wesley on July 5, 2011 at 10:42pm -
Great Story... here's something for your uncle.. http://www.answersincreation.org/whyileft.htm
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Comment by Dustin on July 6, 2011 at 12:22am -
lol , I loved your story. I only have a problem with one part. I think Christians SHOULD learn the bible from an Atheist because we mostly know much much more about the bible then they could ever imagine. I know some of them that have never even read ANY of the Old Testament!!! Much less any of the New , except for a scarce few passages. It's sick. It's truly sick.
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Comment by Moral Atheist on July 6, 2011 at 12:24am
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I agree. I have learned more about the bible since I became an Atheist than I ever did when I was a christian. I never would have believed that then though.
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Comment by Kevin on July 6, 2011 at 2:19am
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Mr. Moral loved your story, chucked regarding your statement about google...I would just like to add that there is absolutely not one person who at anytime has ever followed the words of Jesus to begin with...it has all been shaded by religion and let me show you how easy that bas been done..."take all the money out of the church (that directly refers to man/religion) for this is a place for prayer only"...now pay particular attention to those last two words and tell me what church you have ever seen following them...now let me tell you why he said them, his message was clear and simple, you do not go to God's house to talk to man, if you want to talk to man you go to his house, if you want to talk to God you do it through prayer only (which means it has nothing to do with anyone else)... and here is another heads up he hated the followers of religion and had nothing to do with them for they would have repeated the same bullshit the priests did, the same priests he argued with, he actually mocked them when asked why he did not hang with them..."they,re supposedly saved aren't they" But religion shaded over all of his teachings to fit themselves...and he did not die specifically for anyone he was simply killed because he stood up against religion, was growing in strength and would not join them so he had to go and in a way that no one would ever repeat his words...that is where they failed and that gave way to Christianity which turned him into that which he spoke against...hope that helps a little...and when he said he would return, he was not referring to his body, he was referring to his essence which is knowledge...your the only person I would attempt a conversation like this with, hope it does not work you the wrong way and I do understand evolution and no I am not a monkey...
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