I know that this might not be exactly what you were looking for, but here's my story, which I hope might help. I appreciate your open mind and willingness to seek answers, and your question is quite welcome here. (This response blossomed into quite a long post! I hope you'll read it anyhow.)

I was raised in a loosely Christian household by a working single mother who worked several jobs to support us, with grandparents who were Christian. I often went to a Methodist church, never learned much, but considered myself a 'believer'. When I was a teenager, as we all do, I began to rebel and question everything. The pivotal moment came when I approached our pastor and asked him a pointed question. I don't recall the exact wording, but I believe I asked something along the lines of "How do we know anything in the Bible is true, and not just some fairy tale made up by people hundreds of years ago?" His response, which at the time seemed terse, was essentially, "Because I said so." I stopped being a 'Christian' that day.

I spent about six or eight years after that, bouncing from one ideology to another. I was Wiccan, Buddhist, Taoist, Atheist/Agnostic, and probably a few I'm forgetting. I considered myself worldly, intelligent, and smart enough to figure it all out on my own. I didn't need a God, and I certainly didn't need any more pastors. I thought that people who had faith were somehow broken, inferior, and clinging to a fantasy to make up for their lackluster reality. I spent many many hours debating - antagonizing and belittling - a high school acquaintance, criticizing his beliefs and questioning his logic. Despite my obnoxious insistence, he never backed down, and always seemed to enjoy having discussions with me about faith and Christianity.

The Truth found me when I was 21. However, I have to preface this part of my story by conceding that I cannot - and do not - advocate this way of finding faith. I would probably question the validity of a person's faith if this was their story, but it is true none the less. About a year before I actually found Truth, God sent me an angel. She was cute, smart, and she enjoyed challenging me. I think the only reason we kept talking was to debate faith, but neither of us really expected to convince the other. She would later refer to this as evangelistic dating. Anyhow, I started to fall for her, and so for a while I pretended to agree with her faith. I figured, I could talk the talk and fake it for my whole life, if it meant I got to keep this hottie.

We had met, but we were dating long-distance for a while, and I even started going to church. I went back to a Methodist church, which appealed to me mostly for the music, as the hymns brought me back to happier times with my grandparents, and it felt great to walk right in and know all the songs. I even joined the choir. I still hadn't found Truth, but I kept up the act. Some unexpected life changes caused me to relocate, and soon I was living near my girlfriend, and we continued dating.

I will never forget the night that Truth found me, and not only because I felt the blessing of the Holy Spirit. It was October 31st, 2005 - Halloween. It started with a bit of a fight, because I just thought it was plain stupid that her mother wouldn't allow her siblings to trick-or-treat or do anything with Halloween, because it was of the devil or something like that. We were debating fiercely, and I don't even remember at which point it happened. I think I may even have been winning the argument, but the impact on me had very little to do with the actual discussion.

God touched my heart. I know that sounds silly, especially to those that haven't felt that, and it is hard to explain, but I felt the Holy Spirit within my body, and I knew with absolute certainty that Christ was real and with me. God reached inside me, grabbed onto my fears and doubts and ignorance, and freed me from them all. I was overwhelmed by it, and I began to sob. Now, I'm a big guy, and I don't cry. I mean, I just don't! I certainly don't weep spontaneously during an intellectual argument. This was a profound moment. I knew that Christ was the Truth which I had been searching for, and he found me.

From that moment forward, I opened my heart and my mind. I still consider myself a 'beginner' Christian, and I certainly don't know half the Bible, but God is in my heart and in my life. I have sought him intellectually for quite some time, and I will always be learning. I have found that you simply cannot convince someone of God's existence using strictly logical arguments. I can certainly talk to someone about the stories of the Bible, I can discuss historical facts, and I can tell people how I feel, but it takes faith to believe in God.

One book that I enjoyed, which you might wish to read, is called I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norman Geisler. I picked it up mostly because it sounded absurd, and I thought it would be a bit different from the dry rhetoric which is the norm. TL;DR: Geisler makes a case for God based upon simple logical concepts. Both Christians and scientists believe that the world appeared out of nowhere (the Big Bang), and it makes more sense that was the work of a creator rather than a meaningless 'something out of nothing'. The whole of Creation contains such infinite complexity, that to think that 'natural selection' and other phenomena could give rise to the current ecosystem of this planet requires more faith than to believe in a Creator. (A great example is The Queen of Trees, a PBS documentary about the African fig tree.) Also, evolutionary science is based on things like DNA similarities between creatures, which I believe to be the fingerprints of a single divine Creator. To believe that those similarities are due more to an incredible natural game of chance takes a lot of faith! If any of that interests you, I'd recommend picking up that book.

In the end, we all have faith. Either God exists, God does not exist, or it doesn't matter. It all starts there. I have sought the Truth with my heart and mind, and I have faith, and nothing else makes sense to me. I saw how wretched I was toward my 'friend' in high school, and I reached out to apologize, but I can't begrudge him for not embracing me. Instead I got a fairly lukewarm 'oh, good for you'. I lost track of that one pastor, but I know now that he was young and inexperienced (very new to our church), and he was unable or unwilling to provide a simple answer and thought that I would just accept his statements. I don't hold it against him either. We are all fallible and sinful, but we are one with Christ. Oh, and I married that girl. I question Christianity all the time, and I sometimes wonder if it is all a bunch of baloney, but every time I return to God with a stronger faith. Faith in Christ is a journey, a lifelong experience, and not a singular state of existence. I am a Christian.

> How did you come to the conclusion that God doesn't exist?

The person making a positive claim assumes the burden of proof. Your Christian friend rejected the null hypothesis that {supernatural deities exist} and accepted the alternate hypothesis that {supernatural deities exists}. What evidence is there to support/justification of the null hypothesis and accept the alternate?

Ask your friend to please present the reasons they believe in the God Horus. If you have evidence to support Horus as your God, evidence that is verifiable and falsifiable, or a philosophical argument that can actually be shown to be linked to a natural physicalistic causality-limited universe, evidence that is not an emotional or feeling based subjective experience based upon confirmation bias from prior knowledge of what your "God" image may be, please feel free to present it.

How is that justification for belief in Horus coming along?

I don't think the Christian believes in Horus. And this is the basis for the atheism worldview.

It's not so much the evidence that one can provide (unless you will accept the 'lack of evidence' as evidence) for atheism. Rather it is such an overwhelming lack of any credible evidence that one can identify, or is put forth by others, to support a belief in supernatural deities. One cannot justify rejection of the null hypothesis that {supernatural deities do not exist} and accept/justify/support the alternative hypothesis that {supernatural deities do exist}.

It is possible to argue that this same position can be used for a theist to justify their belief structure over other differing theistic positions, as many theists claim that they believe based upon a feeling or emotion and/or have Religious Faith (i.e., religious belief without evidence) that supernatural deities are real and that their religious belief in supernatural deities is correct.

However, this position of Religious Faith for their own religious worldview is often the same reason they do not subscribe or believe in many other theistic worldviews - there is no evidence to support belief in the supernatural deities of other religious worldviews; they do not have Faith in other supernatural deities. For example, do adherents to any of the following example supernatural deity triads accept or propose belief in the existence of the other triads listed to which they do not have Religious Faith (or belief without evidence)?

• Egyptian: Osiris, Isis, Horus<br />

• Canaanite – Early Israelite: El the Father God, Asherah the Wife/Consort (depicted as a Serpent), Baal-Hadad
  
• Hindu Trimurti: Brahma - the Creator, Vishnu - the Maintainer, Shiva - the Destroyer
  
• Olympian Greek Religion: Zeus, Athena, Apollo
  
• Roman Capitoline Triad: Jupiter, Juno, Minerva
  
• Sumerian: Anu, Ea, Enlil
  
• Babylonian: Shamash, Ishtar, Tammuz
  
• Christianity: Yahweh, Holy Spirit, Jesus
  
  Related statement concerning the belief in "God": We are all functionally atheists, there just is no evidence to justify support of one, or more, (depending on mono- vs. poly-theistic beliefs) supernatural deity(ies) than a Christian, a theist does.
  
  > Return and repent before its too late. Death may be around the corner...
  
  Pascal's Wager? But let's take that self-serving piece of shit statement at face value - What is the purpose of an infinite eternity in Heaven?
  
  Why? Or better, why strive for Heaven?
  
  What is Heaven? According to Christianity, heaven is the purpose of all things. Heaven is the reason we live. Heaven is the reason Christ came and the reason he died for our sins. Heaven is the motivator of all of the apostles. Nothing is more important than heaven. Family, love, money, all of these things come second to heaven. [Source]
  
  Then;
  
  What is the purpose of Heaven? Heaven is life in its perfected state. We, as creatures of God, are not designed to live in an imperfect world. We are designed to live in a world free from the corruption of sin. We are designed to live in the presence of God where we are free to worship, socialize, and discuss. This life is only a temporary existence. Heaven is where we can exist forever. The day heaven’s gates are opened is the day we begin our lives, not here on earth. The purpose of heaven is to provide a place for us to live. [Source]
  
  Then;
  
  What is the purpose of living for eternity in a perfected state with God? In a perfected state with God to provide all it would be Eternally Perfect (and ultimately, Undifferentiated) Bliss, all there is to be known would become known; eternal life in Heaven would quickly become static, unchanging, unremarkable and boring spent in worship of God. Eternal life is ultimately pointless and without merit.
  
  The real question is: Ultimately, what is the difference between heaven and hell?
  
  Nothing. Against an infinite eternity, Heaven and Hell are interchangeable.
  
  ----
  
  Here are some suggestions for Christian debate topics:
  
  
• The actions attributed to God in the bible are all of a positive morality
  
• Yahweh is and always been the one and only true God
  
• The purpose of an infinite eternity in heaven and why that purpose is good for those in heaven
  
• Evidence to support the mind-body dualism of a soul
  
• Evidence to support that the Christian God is the creator of the universe and still intervenes within the universe in a meaningful way
  
• Present a coherent definition of God and show how free will is possible (or impossible) under that construct
  
• Evidence to support the resurrection of Christ that is non-Biblical
  
• Why has prayer never resulted in the healing of an amputee to include at least one healed and fully finctional bone joint?
  
• How the conclusion of the parable of the Ten Minas concludes with a positive morality:
  
  Luke 19:27 But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them — bring them here and kill them in front of me.
  
  
• Genesis 3 (if you are a Genesis literalist) - Justify Christian morality against the Serpent (or Adversary) giving humankind morality (knowledge of good and evil) when God/Yahweh had decreed that humankind was not to have morality (forbid humans to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil).
  
• Why the divine or inspired word of God and Christ and the Spirit was so directed and appropriate for a small low-population tribe of desert dwellers with it's late bronze age/early iron age society applies to today's society.
  
• Why the overwhelming majority of Christians, in the one true religion for the one true and only God, seem to be only located in geo-political-socio-groups that they were born, and indoctrinated, into rather than distributed throughout other regions where other religions are prominent.
  
• Does God have free will?
  
• Why worship a God, Yahweh/YHWH, as the one true and only mono-theistic God when all historical documentation shows that Yahweh did not start out as anything more than a subordinate desert rain/fertility/warrior god to the Canaanite/Ugarit people that would later become known as Israelites (and hence to Jews and from there Christians and Muslims). During the period that Genesis and Exodus (1450-1410 BCE'ish) were (supposedly) being written, represented a time when the religion of the region was still in convergence, differentiation and displacement (synthesis and syncretism) of the polytheistic triad of the most prominent Canaanite and Ugarit Gods: El (the father God), Asherah (goddess, wife or companion to El), and Baal (storm/rain God, son of El) [though there is reference in Ugarit documents to Yahweh also being one of the sons of El] to the monolatry of the storm/rain God Yahweh and from there to monotheistic worship where Yahweh took the supreme position. References to Gods that predate, and are contemporary to, Yahweh can be found throughout the old testament.
  
  More online references with discussion the origin of the monotheistic God of Israel:
  
  
• Israelite Religion to Judaism: the Evolution of the Religion of Israel
  
• The Origins and Gradual Adoption of Monotheism Amongst the Ancient Israelites
  
• The evolution of God
  
• Ugarit and the Bible
  
  Other:
  
  
• The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel by Mark Smith
  
• The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts by Mark S. Smith
  
• A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong
  
• The Religion of Ancient Israel (Library of Ancient Israel) by Patrick D. Miller
  
• Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches by Ziony Zevit
  
  

Former fedora atheist here. For a long time, I felt like I belonged to the "skeptical, rational, atheist" tribe. But at one point I became disillusioned with the crowd, and realized that I no longer want to be part of it. I started looking for alternatives, groups I'd want to be a part of, and I settled upon Catholicism. I first approached it from a purely secular perspective, as a serious and reliable institution. But I ended up accepting the faith and God as well.

Here's my progression, what drew me in more and more:

I. The intellectual life. I was always fascinated by science. It was interactions with promoters of dishonest creationism (usually evangelicals) that originally pushed me towards rejecting religion and to become a militant atheist.

Then I read a book that changed how I view the relation between Church and science: God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science. I now follow @catholiclab and similar profiles on Twitter, which post interesting facts about Catholic scientists. It's simply astounding how this information is completely absent from contemporary popular culture.

II. Just on an emotional level, feeling "closer" to Catholics. It helped that my family is Catholic. On YouTube, I've watched many videos by Bishop Robert Barron, Fr. Mike. They are very lucid and reasonable in addressing contemporary issues. I'm sure there are many others.

I'm also reading biographies of martyrs who died persecuted in modernity by revolutionary ideologies. My TODO reading list includes books by Thomas Merton, Joseph Ratzinger, and the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola.

III. The aesthetics. I'm subscribed on Twitter to profiles like @Christian8Pics which post a lot of inspiring imagery. Familiarity breeds liking. I also listen to music on YouTube: liturgy, Medieval chants, Mozart's Requiem, Byzantine chants (usually Eastern Orthodox).

All these sideways might seem very strange to a Catholic convert or someone raised Catholic who stayed Catholic. But if someone is immersed in a materialistic, mechanistic and atheistic worldview, there's no available grammar or impulse to even take God or the life of the Church into consideration.

IV. Actually knowing what theism is all about. The "god" dismissed by popular atheist debaters is a caricature of God as understood by classical theism and the actual tradition of the Church. So is the "god" argued for by Intelligent Design proponents, biblical literalists, fundamentalists.

I read 2 books by Edward Feser (Catholic) and David Bentley Hart (Eastern Orthodox) to finally become comfortable with this very simple point. The books I read are, in order:

By Edward Feser:

• The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism
  
  
• Aquinas (A Beginner's Guide)
  
  By David Bentley Hart:
  
  
• Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies
  
  
• [The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss] (https://www.amazon.com/Experience-God-Being-Consciousness-Bliss/dp/0300209355)
  
  Each author has his own biases, which might trip the reader up at times (Hart is biased against evolutionary psychology for some reason). But these books produced in me a fresh view of where to begin seeking for God. They gave me the confidence to proceed.
  
  Atheism always addresses "god" as if it's simply one entity among others, part of the natural world, for which one ought to find physical traces and then one simply "believes in the existence of god" (much like you'd believe there's a car parked outside your house, once you look out the window and observe it's there -- meaning it could just as well NOT be there).
  
  Creationists just muddy the waters with "god of the gaps" and "Paley's watch" style theories, which simply postulate "god" as an explanation for why this or that aspect of the natural world is a certain way, a tinkerer god which molds the physical world into shape, or which created it at some point in the past.
  
  This has nothing to do with how God is presented by the authors I quoted, and they go to great lengths to make this point.
  
  I started by understanding that there needs to be an ultimate answer to certain metaphysical questions which, by definition, can't have a physical answer (e.g. "why does there exist a physical world in the first place?"). There's a qualitative difference between physical questions and metaphysical ones, and the gap simply can't be breached by adding more layers of physicality. Hart makes this point very well (he differentiates between the Demiurge that deists, atheists and creationists discuss, and God as the "necessary being" of classical theism).
  
  The ultimate metaphysical cause is "necessary" because it's simply a necessity for the physical world to have a non-physical cause which keeps it in existence. If the only thing that existed was a quantum field that didn't produce any particles, or a single proton that always existed and will always exist, the "necessity" would be exactly the same. Nothing would change even if it turned out our Universe is part of a Multiverse.
  
  Then, through reasoning, one can deduce certain characteristics of this ultimate answer, which ends up forming the classical theistic picture of God as a "necessary being" which continuously creates every aspect of the physical universe. Feser is very good at explaining this part and especially at underlining how tentative and feeble our understanding of the unfathomable is. He also explains why it has to be a "being" rather than an unknown impersonal cause. It's a humbling experience.
  
  But as Bishop Robert Barron stated in his interview on the Rubin Report, philosophy only takes you halfway there. Looking back, the existence of God simply makes sense and is a no-brainer. Faith doesn't have to do with "accepting that God exists with no evidence". Faith is about what you do once you realize that the existence of God is an inescapable conclusion of rational thought. What do you do once you realize that He exists and is conscious of us? You have to go beyond the impersonal, and engage, interact. Here's where prayer, the liturgical life and spiritual exercises come into play.
  
  Unlike conversion, faith isn't a one-time historical event, it's a daily effort on one's part to drive one's thoughts towards the infinite and the ultimate cause of everything. This requires individual effort, but it is not an individual venture. One has the entire tradition and life of the Church to guide you: selfless persons who dedicated their lives to help people like you and me.
  
  Here's how Feser, in his "Last Superstition" book, describes the various ways of conceiving of God:
  
  >To understand what serious religious thinkers do believe, we might usefully distinguish five gradations in one’s conception of God:
  
  >1. God is literally an old man with a white beard, a kind if stern wizard-like being with very human thoughts and motivations who lives in a place called Heaven, which is like the places we know except for being very far away and impossible to get to except through magical means.
  
  >2. God doesn’t really have a bodily form, and his thoughts and motivations are in many respects very different from ours. He is an immaterial object or substance which has existed forever, and (perhaps) pervades all space. Still, he is, somehow, a person like we are, only vastly more intelligent, powerful, and virtuous, and in particular without our physical and moral limitations. He made the world the way a carpenter builds a house, as an independent object that would carry on even if he were to “go away” from it, but he nevertheless may decide to intervene in its operations from time to time.
  
  >3. God is not an object or substance alongside other objects or substances in the world; rather, He is pure being or existence itself, utterly distinct from the world of time, space, and things, underlying and maintaining them in being at every moment, and apart from whose ongoing conserving action they would be instantly annihilated. The world is not an independent object in the sense of something that might carry on if God were to “go away”; it is more like the music produced by a musician, which exists only when he plays and vanishes the moment he stops. None of the concepts we apply to things in the world, including to ourselves, apply to God in anything but an analogous sense. Hence, for example, we may say that God is “personal” insofar as He is not less than a person, the way an animal is less than a person. But God is not literally “a person” in the sense of being one individual thing among others who reasons, chooses, has moral obligations, etc. Such concepts make no sense when literally applied to God.
  
  >4. God as understood by someone who has had a mystical experience of the sort Aquinas had.
  
  >5. God as Aquinas knows Him now, i.e. as known in the beatific vision attained by the blessed after death.
  
  What I've been talking about is at #3. Atheists and creationists are debating #1 and #2. #4 is a gift to be accorded by grace, and is what people strive for in their spiritual life. #5 is the ultimate goal of the Christian life.

> If God will exist, I am already living by it.

It sounds like your standards are based on just yourself (circular logic).

God is an infinitely intelligent being that knows the optimal thing to do at each moment. Do you think that you are living a perfect life in charity and virtue ? Are you helping as many people as you possibly could ? The truth is that all have fallen short of God's grace. We are all sinners. The best that we can do is be thankful and repentant.

Saint Vincent Ferrer was probably the most holy person to walk the earth since the Apostles and He lamented at how sinful he was. If you don't realize your own sinfulness in the sight of God, then you don't know about God.

> Having a plan and not telling me about it.

The word "plan" is misleading when referring to God. He is outside of time and knows the future, but we are locked in this timeline. From God's perspective, things have already happened AND they are currently happening...so it's not quite a "plan".

From our perspective, all we need to worry about is that we have free will, and whether or not we're making the most of it.

> Having a plan and not telling me about it.

Unless you are blind and quadriplegic, God has given you great abilities and a sense to make the most of them. You will be accountable for what you did or didn't do with them. Choose wisely.

You'll know if you are doing the right thing if you have a sense of joy. ...Like rescuing children from Human trafficking, or helping homeless people get back on their feet.

For reference, Mother Teresa would clean up people who were dying in the open sewers of Calcutta. Most people would avoid there because of the terrible smell, yet it brought her great joy. I would guess that you have more physical abilities than she did as a 100 pound little woman.

> Not all gay sex is adultery,

The Christian definition of adultery is not definable by each person (circular logic). All Gay sex is abhorrent in the eyes of God because He gave us the gift of procreation to have children. The Bible says this in several places, but it is also possible to reason out theologically. Since God is your creator, Gay sex is like master-bating in front of your parents, while they are begging for you to have grandchildren. Gay sex only serves one's own physical lusts. Gay sex can not produce a child, or serve someone in charity (Love). The physical effects like AIDS was God's way of warning people not to do it. God also gives mankind dominion over the physical world, which is the only reason why AIDS hasn't been more destructive.

> and strait martial sex can give you stds.

It's not just a matter of gay versus straight. Lots of straight people commit adultery. e.g. Porn stars. However, two wrongs do not make a right.

Christianity's standard is monogamous marriage and abstinence before marriage. If people had followed that, then millions of innocent people would not have died of AIDS and other STDs.

> homosexuality is not a choice. God made some people attracted to men, and his mad?

Human will is more complicated than that. By the time a child is 5, the child has had millions of impressions. I don't think that homosexuals are consciously deciding to be gay. It is more the product of malformation. For example, there are towns in Thailand where young boys are trained to be prostitutes for men. They are not "choosing".

I believe that God gives each of us the necessary graces to overcome our situations. There are tonnes of great testimonials of former homosexuals on www.couragerc.org.

> Not all parents are homophobes.

Not sure what you mean by that. If parents encourage homosexuality, they will have a very hard time facing God. Parents are supposed to teach their children to love God, not indulge in their physical lusts. For example, children also want to eat candy all day. Parents are supposed to teach responsible behavior.

God calls everyone to Heaven, but only the repentant can face Him, because He is Truth itself and shines like the sun. Those who can face the Truth are glorified by God's light. Those who have unrepentant sin are burned by His light. That's the basis of Heaven and Hell. They are both fueled by God's light.

> And if it's only bad if God is real, I call that blind faith.

Well, I was an atheist~agnostic for over 30 years and now understand that there is nothing blind about believing in Christianity. Quite the opposite. It is like openning one's eyes.

Ironically, believing in things like abiogenesis requires blind faith. There is ZERO proof of it, and it defies the laws of physics, like entropy.

I agree with Dr. Turek and his book title:

"I don't have enough faith to be an atheist"

https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Have-Enough-Faith-Atheist/dp/1581345615

>This leads me to two possible conclusions:

1. Christianity is not true.
   
2. Christianity is true, but being a Christian is not required to go to Heaven. It is more about being a good person that gets you to heaven. And you don't need religion to be a good person. This verse possibly backs it up: John 3:17 - "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." If belief in Christianity was required, the vast majority of the world's population that lived from 30 AD to 2018 would go to Hell. Sounds like condemning the world from a cruel God. Not saving the world from a loving God.
   
   These options do not seem exhaustive. For example, it could (logically) be the case that all people go to heaven, not just the ones who lived good lives on earth. You find individual thinkers and traditions throughout the history of Christianity that have endorsed or entertained this option, including in antiquity Origen and in the modern day John Hick. Prominent Catholic theologian (with an awesome name) Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote a famous book on the issue: https://www.amazon.com/Dare-Hope-Saved-Short-Discourse/dp/0898702070
   
   As for the second option, this is one that has been very seriously entertained by Christians at various points. One of the most important documents to come out of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) was the Lumen Gentium. (Not to be confused with the Lumen from The Strain) Lumen Gentium declares that:
   
   >Nor is God remote from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, since he gives to all men life and breath and all things (cf. Acts 17:25-28), and since the Saviour wills all men to be saved (cf. 1 Tim 2:4). Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation.
   
   (Lumen Gentium can be found here: http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html )
   
   This is also an issue that many protestant theologians have thought seriously about. (Although until at least the 17th century, the official Lutheran position was that all people had heard the Gospel, since Jesus in Acts says to the disciples that "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8) ) There have been various proposals from more or less serious theologians, such as that Jesus during the three days spent with the dead preached to them, thus offering a path to salvation by hearing the gospel to those already dead.
   
   >If belief in Christianity was required, the vast majority of the world's population that lived from 30 AD to 2018 would go to Hell.
   
   Those who view belief in Christianity as required tend also to view going to hell as the default option for members of a sinful humanity. That is, to them, the alternative to Christianity would not be everybody going to heaven, but everybody going to hell. As such, the scenario you describe definitely seems preferable, even as the best of two really bad scenarios for humanity.
   
   >If Christianity is not required, then what is the point of being a Christian? If it is easy, if you enjoy being Christian, then no problem. But what if it is hard? Your motivation begins to fade once you realize it is not required.
   
   You seem to assume that the only viable motivation for being a Christian is the expectation of hedonist rewards. Pleasure is not the only reason to do things, and it is not the only goal with which we act in our everyday lives. For example, there is the goal of truth. If the doctrines of Christianity are true, then that should by itself be a reason to believe them. Another reason might be gratitude. If God has created a world where everyone goes to heaven, then that seems to be a pretty good reason to display (authentic) gratitude towards God. Following God's commands and worshipping God seems to be pretty good ways of expressing such gratitude. I'm sure there are many other potential reasons.

I'm glad you liked them! Kudos to you for taking the time to read them. There's always more to Catholic thought than the caricatures and oversimplifications out there might indicate, but so few people take the time and effort to discover that. :)

Regarding God's existence, is your hesitation in the mind or in the heart? If merely intellectual, there's also a ton in the Catholic tradition that demonstrates God’s existence quite solidly. For starters, in order by time commitment:

1. This comic is a small attempt at trying to make one of these these rather abstract and high level but really cool arguments understandable: http://sweetheartsseekingsanctity.blogspot.com/2014/05/why-god-exists-rational-proof.html.
   
2. Edward Feser has a collection of posts about the same basic argument that goes into a lot more detail: http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/07/cosmological-argument-roundup.html.
   
3. And I’ve found this short-ish book to be a great natural language, step-by-step, understandable journey through the argument: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WZMNOOA/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1.
   
4. Finally, Feser’s new book explains this argument and four other compelling ones rather rigorously: https://www.amazon.com/Five-Proofs-Existence-Edward-Feser-ebook/dp/B0754MJFMG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1517730412&sr=1-1&keywords=feser+proofs+for+the+existence
   
   If, on the other hand, your hesitation is more in the heart (which is usually the case, even for me sometimes), I would suggest trying prayer. If you ask God honestly to help you find the truth, even if you don’t think he’s really there to listen, he will help. As long as you are open to finding him . . . he will find you. :) I don’t mean this in some over-emotional protestant way (which often ignores reason entirely), but faith really is a matter of our (I sigh at using this word, but oh well) relationship with God. So often today faith is defined as sheer, willed belief, without evidence or even in the face of evidence. But that’s a new-ish definition with origins in protestantism. For Catholics, faith is better defined as trust in God and what he has revealed. You can sure as heck have good reasons for that trust, including the intellectual knowledge that God exists. But at the end of the day, it comes down to you and God. (Just as knowing that my wife exists is a necessary precondition for our love, but doesn’t actually help me get close to her.) :)

For what it's worth, it appears as though a couple people downvoted you, not the enitirety of /r/Christianity.

And I hope to answer your lofty question from an individual's perspective, that is, my own. I cannot speak for anyone else, but I am inclined to believe my faith is shared by Christians who have studied and know their faith, rather than 'cultural Christians' who in my opinion comprise the majority of 'Conservative Right Wing' movements that always get so much air time.

On to my answer. I have heard that all behavior is results driven. This is a larger, more philosophical discussion to be had I'm sure, but let's assume this for the sake of simplicity. Agnosticts, Atheists, Christians, Mormons, Hindus... Our motives may differ in divisive ways, but ultimately they are all for a purpose. A goal. If you look specifically at theists, many are motivated ultimately by fear of judgement or anticipation of reward. Buddhists argue reincarnation to enlightenment, Mormons argue levels of heaven to world ownership, many Christians argue hell to heaven, although I would assume the majority of any of these faith's members do not know well enough the dogmas they both practice and preach.

Being a Christian myself, I am of the inclination that there is a 'reward' and a 'judgement' awaiting each of us, but only as it pertains to our Creator. I should clarify what I mean. I am entirely against the idea of 'heaven' and 'hell' being metaphorical allegories as promoted by a user above (who is not Christian but instead a member of The Course which is far more New Age than Judaistic in nature.) and I believe them to be actual destinations despite our having very little clarification for either. Hell is originally mentioned in different contexts (due to the English lack of similar Hebrew/Greek words, the same with 'love', etc) but certainly not enough for us to make wholesale accounts for the who/what/why/hows of it. I see that 'heaven' is mentioned in more specific context, and yet scripture equally promotes the idea that we clearly have no real concept of what it will be other than an intimate proximity to God. If hell is the opposite, it is not a place created by God, intended for His failures (nor is that descriptive of the character of God in scripture), it is the separation from Him in that it is the propitiation and eventuality of people's denying Him. People don't recognize him here, so He does not force fellowship with Himself later.

Scripture already echoes this in Psalm 81:12, Romans 1:24, etc, when it says "[He] gave them over to their sinful desires." This nods directly to the argument of free will v. predestination, but in essence God loves us and wants to be with us and has provided an easy way to do so that does not have to do with action, but our hearts. Our fellowship with our Creator is more so a challenge of our own individual pride than a call to 'stop smoking' or 'stop drinking.' He merely asks that we deny our pride and acknowledge His Son as having paid our penalty that we can be made flawless to enter in to fellowship with our flawless God. Romans 10:9 examines just how simple a step salvation can be, in that if you 'confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." Addressing briefly the concept of works, it is commonly held by Christians that they bear not on our eventual evaluation by God, but rather are an evidence of our faith and proximity to a holy God.

Let me wrap this up. A lot of Christians are still motivated either by anticipation of heaven or fear of hell. Those motivated by 'fear' suffer an unhealthy relationship with God and a misguided perspective of him. And some of those pining for heaven miss the mark as well, still being motivated by a subtle yet selfish hope for what they will get, from the incorrectly interpreted 'mansion' and 'street of gold' to even include our being with God. I don't think this is wrong, but I have found that I believe my faith to be true. Not true for me alone, but the all encompassing, effects-everything truth under which everyone is subject. Because of that, I am often motivated more by my serving God as it pleases Him than because I will benefit. And in that way I suppose it still pleases me that it pleases Him and dissect that as much as you want. As for your question, it is difficult to answer became I am motivated by logic and reason and it's so hypothetical, "What if you just discovered there were no heaven or hell?" I cannot fathom a scenario in which that would play out short of something that both dismisses my own years of study and experience and irrefutably proves that God does not exist in which case, I would not suspend belief but follow the truth (Which, for what it's worth I cannot imagine happening, but since we're discussing hypotheticals...). As for the 'All Dougs Go To Heaven' theology, there are already thousands of Christians who believe that. Rob Bell's "Love Wins" promotes such an outcome for us, however dubious his sources are. And in my personal opinion, if somehow I realized I have been misreading scripture and it led me to that conclusion, still I would be unmoved in my love for God and therefore others as it pertains to eternity, because God has still described and even modeled what is right in regard to our conduct with others. As tempting as a 'free pass' would be to my humanity, my interest in serving God (by His strength) would steer me from much of it. I am certain I would sin. I do currently. But ultimately I am in pursuit of His glorification not/more than my own.

EDIT: I accidentally a word.

It's a bunch of gobbledygook about the generations and the kingdom and all of that. It's all nonsense. In my humble opinion, you need to de-indoctrinate yourself to fully remove these types of fears. Not sure if I've shared this post with you before, but here's what I did personally:

Take some time to learn about the history of the bible. For example, you can take the Open Yale Courses on Religious Studies for free.

Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Next, learn some actual science. For example - spoiler alert: evolution is true. Visit Berkeley's excellent Understanding Evolution Website.. Or, if you're pressed for time, watch this cartoon.

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

Learn about the origin of the universe. For example, you could read works by Stephen Hawking

Read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Learn about critical thinking from people like Michael Shermer, and how to spot logical fallacies.


For good measure, use actual data and facts to learn the we are NOT living in some biblical "last days". Things have gotten remarkably better as man has progressed in knowledge. For example, watch this cartoon explaining how war is on the decline..

Read The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

Another great source is the youtube series debunking 1914 being the start of the last days.

Another way to clear out the cobwebs is to read and listen to exiting stories. Here are some resources:

https://leavingjw.org

Here is a post with links to a bunch of podcasts interviewing JWs who've left

Here's another bunch of podcasts about JWs

Here is a great book from Psychotherapist and former JW Bonnie Zieman - Exiting the JW Cult: A Helping Handbook

I wish you the best. There is a whole world of legitimate information out there based on actual evidence that you can use to become a more knowledgeable person.

You may still wonder how you can be a good human without "the truth." Here is a good discussion on how one can be good without god. --Replace where he talks about hell with armageddon, and heaven with paradise--

To go further down the rabbit hole, watch this series.

Here's a nice series debunking most creationist "logic".

Start to help yourself begin to live a life where, as Matt Dillahunty puts it, you'll "believe as many true things, and as few false things as possible."

Here's another side of the coin. Not necessarily to drag you out of the cult, but just some very awesome, beautiful truths. If you've seen me post this before, i apologize. I don't like to assume everyone reads every thread.

Take some time to learn about the history of the bible. For example, you can take the Open Yale Courses on Religious Studies for free.

Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Next, learn some actual science. For example - spoiler alert: evolution is true. Visit Berkeley's excellent Understanding Evolution Website.. Or, if you're pressed for time, watch this cartoon.

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

Learn about the origin of the universe. For example, you could read works by Stephen Hawking

Read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Learn about critical thinking from people like Michael Shermer, and how to spot logical fallacies.


For good measure, use actual data and facts to learn the we are NOT living in some biblical "last days". Things have gotten remarkably better as man has progressed in knowledge. For example, watch this cartoon explaining how war is on the decline..

Read The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

Another great source is the youtube series debunking 1914 being the start of the last days.

I wish you the best. There is a whole world of legitimate information out there based on actual evidence that you can use to become a more knowledgeable person.

You may still wonder how you can be a good human without "the truth." Here is a good discussion on how one can be good without god. --Replace where he talks about hell with armageddon, and heaven with paradise--

Start to help yourself begin to live a life where, as Matt Dillahunty puts it, you'll "believe as many true things, and as few false things as possible."

> How do we explain that we all seem to know what is right and wrong?

We are all descended from ancestors who lived in small groups. Cooperation and empathy were crucial adaptations for living in small groups. Typical people (that is, people with empathy) are capable of recognising the emotions of others, and instinctively respond to those emotions. Morality is something built on top of this, and is informed by what we know about human behaviour and human experience. And, there's a lot we don't agree on, but the basics (things like killing and stealing) people do.

Check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality

> Why do we all look for and want meaning if this is a meaningless world?

This is a great question, one that I've not encountered before. I don't think the world is meaningless at all. If you believe that the only meaning possible comes from a deity, then certainly, I can understand why you might think that a godless world would be meaningless. But, we're intelligent beings capable of making value judgements. We are more than capable of assigning our own meaning to things.

I would argue that for our species, our sense of self-worth is tied to our understanding of our purpose. As social beings, we have evolved to be happy when we belong to a group, fulfilling some role that is important or unique. Life can be tough, but it's made better when we know that our struggle has some compensating benefit - being a parent can be really challenging, but people still do the 2am feedings because they know that there is a child that is relying on them. I'm not happy unless I accomplish something, or solve a problem, or make someone's life just a little bit better. If we did not derive meaning out of raising children or being cooperative and social with other members of our species, it would likely be that we would not have survived this long.

> How can we know what is true? If our brains have evolved to ensure our survival and not necessarily tell us what is true... how can we be sure of anything?

We test things. We build models of reality in our heads, and we run simulations to predict the outcomes of our actions. If we find that the outcomes closely match what we predict, we can be confident that they are correct insofar as they produce accurate predictions: someone once said that all models are wrong, but some are useful..

So, we care less about ultimate truth, and are more interested in relative truth. What do I mean by this? Well, imagine for a moment that this reality is just a computer simulation, one so good that we don't know it's a simulation. The best we could hope to do in such a case is to understand the rules of this simulated reality. The rules might not be the ultimate rules of the reality in which the simulation runs (say, the laws of physics governing the computer that's running the simulation.)

I don't have absolute certainty in most things. At best, I have varying degrees of confidence, based on justification. For the things of which I'm very certain, I can point to the reasons why I think what I think and I can explain why those reasons are sufficient - invariably, this has to do with things like empiricism.

> How do you as an atheist defend the fine-tuning argument? The chances of a world existing with life, even existing at all, is incredibly low. Did we really just get extremely lucky?

Incredibly low, perhaps. But consider the number of habitable planets in our own galaxy, and the number of galaxies in our observable universe. The statistics of large numbers allows for the rare to become common.

It's also worth pointing out that if the gravity of Earth was a bit stronger or the Earth was a bit closer or a bit farther away from the Sun, perhaps a different life would have evolved here, and that different life would be remarking how the Earth is perfectly suited to that life. This is exactly what Douglas Adams was talking about with the parable of the sentient puddle. We evolved to fit this environment - not the other way around. We look the way we do because nature has taken the "clay" and pressed it into a people-like mould, and a cheetah-like mould, and a sequoia-like mould, and so on.

> What do you think is the best argument against Christianity?

Probably an utter lack of any credible evidence for any of its supernatural claims.

Also too, when you learn how the bible came to be as we know it today, it becomes very difficult take the claim seriously that it is inspired by a deity. Karen Armstrong's book A History of God is an excellent read that shows how the character of Yahweh evolved over time, beginning as a provincial war god before being promoted by the Yahwist cult, supplanting other deities in the Canaanite pantheon, before large chunks of what would eventually become the Old Testament, were re-written as though Yahweh had always been the one true god - it really strains credulity. You can see a video summary of the key parts of the book here.

Your comment is simply wrong. The Catholic Church, its leaders, and its leading theologians explicitly affirm that people who die as non-believers can attain salvation.

Citing Augustine, Pope Benedict XVI in 2005 endorsed the idea of salvation for non-believers. See the Zenit article, "Nonbelievers Too Can Be Saved, Says Pope," as well as the text of the general audience in which the comments were made.

One of the greatest Catholic theologians of the 20th century, Hans urs von Balthasar (who died shortly before he was to be made a cardinal) proposed that, within the Catholic theological tradition, it is entirely possible for Catholics to hope that all will be saved and that hell is, in fact, empty. He authored a book titled, "Dare We Hope that All Men Be Saved?" (spoiler alert: yes).

Cardinal Avery Dulles, writing in First Things, summarized our position thusly:

>The universal evidences of the divine, under the leading of grace, can give rise to a rudimentary faith that leans forward in hope and expectation to further manifestations of God’s merciful love and of his guidance for our lives. By welcoming the signs already given and placing their hope in God’s redeeming love, persons who have not heard the tidings of the gospel may nevertheless be on the road to salvation. If they are faithful to the grace given them, they may have good hope of receiving the truth and blessedness for which they yearn...

>Who, then, can be saved? Catholics can be saved if they believe the Word of God as taught by the Church and if they obey the commandments. Other Christians can be saved if they submit their lives to Christ and join the community where they think he wills to be found. Jews can be saved if they look forward in hope to the Messiah and try to ascertain whether God’s promise has been fulfilled. Adherents of other religions can be saved if, with the help of grace, they sincerely seek God and strive to do his will. Even atheists can be saved if they worship God under some other name and place their lives at the service of truth and justice. God’s saving grace, channeled through Christ the one Mediator, leaves no one unassisted. But that same grace brings obligations to all who receive it. They must not receive the grace of God in vain. Much will be demanded of those to whom much is given.

The god of the bible itself is a logical fallacy... but more to that in a moment...

Here's my subscription list in YouTube in alphabetical order:

• C0nc0rdance - dedicated to cutting through scientific hype and helping the laymen understand the real science behind the hype. Not so much anti-religion as pro science.
  
  
• cdk007 - Evolution explanations. General creationist lie busting. Try his "Logic of Religion" Series.
  
  
• DarkMatter2525 - sort of a humorous site, he pokes fun more than most, but he exposes some fallacies.
  
  
• DonExodus - His older stuff is better IMO, but still a very solid channel.
  
  
• dprjones - some good stuff here, he's more up on the YouTube drama than some of the others.
  
  
• Evid3nc3 - Some interesting, "how I became an atheist" stories. But the real gem of this collection has to be: A History of God part 1. Which is essentially a book report on the book "A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam"
  
  
• GreatBigBore - His newer stuff is way off base of his older stuff... He used to do critiques of creationist/atheist debates, creationist papers, and religious propaganda, pointing out every logical fallacy he can find. Try the "God's Quality Control 2.0" series.
  
  
• Jon LaJoie - not religiously related, but HILARIOUS nevertheless, you needed a break anyway - start with everyday normal guy and keep the laughs coming.
  
  
• National Center for Science Education - The group trying very hard to keep Evolution in schools and Religion out of them. Dr Eugenie Scott is probably one of my personal heroes.
  
  
• NonStampCollector - very funny, has lots of biblical contradictions in here. He loves em. Funny guy. But if there is a hell this guy's goin there unless god's got an infinite sense of humor too...
  
  
• Philhellenes - If there was an atheist church, this would be the pastor. Warning, it can be a tear jerker... Science Saved My Soul. Deliberately uses religious tactics to invoke emotions in scientific minds to great effect.
  
  
• potholer54 - Another personal hero. Former science news correspondent, destroys creationist arguments with his huge hammer of justice. Also has Potholer54debunks.
  
  
• ProfMTH - again, older stuff is amazing. His "Brief Bible Blunders" series was really good.
  
  
• QualiaSoup - Now we're cooking with fire. This guy is who you're looking for. He destroys religion's base arguments. He decimates every argument with his soft accented voice. Putting faith in its place is where I'd start.
  
  
• A single video by smsavage32 - Was Jesus a Myth? - very enlightening.
  
  
• TheraminTrees - Here's the brother of QualiaSoup. Deals with the psychological effects of religion. Amazing two guys here, can't go wrong with them. I'd suggest Atheism as congruence and Transition to Atheism for his personal story.
  
  
  To recap, almost everything in TheraminTrees and QualiaSoup's channels are just amazing. Watch them and have your mind grapes soar. I wish I could watch Science Saved my Soul again for the first time. That was such an experience - I envy you.

Great question! Two things. First, it's important to let people exercise their own creative gifts, but at the end of the day you need to be the leader with the clear vision. For example, it's good for people to have chord charts but to also feel free to not play it EXACTLY as the guy on the recording does. At the same time, if someone's doing something that's WAY off the sound in YOUR head, you need to be confident enough to pull them back.

Second, be secure in your vision for the worship team. Are you there as an outreach, to entertain, to help just by playing along so people can sing songs they like, to engage in deep worship, etc.??? Who you allow to be a part of your team will directly flow from that. If your team is an outreach, then your standard for "worship team membership" should be pretty low. If you're there to directly lead people into the "presence of God," then you probably don't want anybody on your team who doesn't really understand worship and actively live out a solid Christian life.

There are a lot of good resources, but I would recommend two in particular: Worship Matters - Bob Kauflin, and, if you want to invest a little more time and money, WorshipU.

There are a ton of good people on this sub who can offer helpful advice, so keep asking questions as they come up. You'll do great!

I am at 3 years and counting. I am now 24. I am in the same boat as you in some ways. I NEVER thought that I could be an atheist and was incredibly involved in the church. I fully believed it and VERY much enjoyed it. Youth group, men's group, worship team, mission trips the whole works. But now, like you it is hard for me to imagine being swayed back.


For a while I wanted it to be true. After a while that began to fade as I realized how much bigger the world is without the god of the Bible. I am so much happier now. I guess a better way to describe it is I am much more satisfied and feel much more fulfilled about my life. I know it is a bit cheesy and dramatic, but this video had a big effect on me as I became an atheist. One line in particular addressed this feeling of wanting god to be true:
> Could it be that someone promised us something so beautiful that our universe seems dull, empty, even frightening by comparison?

At first that is kind of how I felt. I was promised heaven. I was promised that I was going to live forever with the creator. However, another part of the video addressed this and is one of my favorite lines:

>We were told long ago and for a long time that there was only the Earth—that we were the center of everything. That turned out to be wrong. We still haven’t fully adjusted. We’re still in shock. The universe is not what we expected it to be. It’s not what they told us it would be. This cosmic understanding is all new to us. But there’s nothing to fear. We’re still special. We’re still blessed. And there might yet be a heaven, but it isn’t going to be perfect. And we’re going to have to build it ourselves.


I know that I will never be as sure about my atheism as I was about my Christianity. But I have learned that is a good thing. It was un-healthy how sure I was in Christianity. Nobody can honestly be a true gnostic atheist and that is ok.

I will say however that I can be pretty sure that the god of the Bible is not god, but to say that I am 100% sure that there is no god is a irrational statement to say.


I did a lot of studying as I was becoming an atheist. Honestly I know the Bible better now that I ever did as a Christian. The more I learned the more unsure I was about Christianity.


There is a book you might like. It is called a A History of God. I am reading it right now and it is very good and I recommend it.


How do you feel now as a atheist? About life? About yourself? I am just wondering because I wonder if it was some of the same things I felt. I like talking to people as they are changing their world view in one way or another :)

Well, here on r/Christianity you are going to receive a wide range of answers about these questions you have. Many are cessationists (do not believe the gifts are for today) so just keep that in mind.

I believe the gifts are very much for today! However, I also have seen some abuses in the church and you are wise to be careful. We need to seek more of Jesus and more of what He desires for us to have, not just chase a feeling or some sort of "spiritual high" that is out there.

I speak in tongues and have found it to be one of the most powerful gifts, honestly. I was rather confused as well with this gift, the purpose of it. I even questioned if I had even received the gift as I had some phrases that came to my mind, but it wasn't this amazing encounter where my mouth was taken over. I was only 11 or 12 when I received the gift of tongues. I went forward for prayer and then I began to speak the syllables that came to my head and that was it. Nothing that exciting really. I didn't even know what the gift was about, just that everyone else seemed to think it was necessary. However, this book has been so helpful in my greater understanding of this gift and it has been the catalyst to some amazingly powerful encounters with God using me in miraculous ways. Here is the link to the free book by Dave Roberson: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ARFNII4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

As for being "slain in the Spirit" I have had people try to push me down too. Trust me, if it is of the Lord there is no need to be pushed. It can happen that the power of the Spirit will manifest so strongly that we cannot stand in His presence, I have actually been slain only once and I wasn't pushed at all and it was a feeling like I landed on a soft bed of feathers, strangely! Kind of cool. Not sure the purpose of such experiences as I ponder back, but I guess any encounter with the Holy Spirit is a sweet thing that we should welcome.

And on the topic of the "prophets." This is a subject of much angst for me. I left a church many years ago partially because of the fact they were almost worshiping the so called "prophets" more than Jesus. It was so ridiculous, really. That isn't to say that the Holy Spirit doesn't speak through us prophetically. I have had words of knowledge and words of wisdom and have spoken "prophetically" on many occasions. Should I go get some "prophetess" business cards now? (I feel nauseous even typing that as I am being completely sarcastic of course!!!!) I have had manipulative words spoken over me. When I meet someone that calls themselves by the name "prophet" I am very cautious. Why would anyone want to advertise that? The prophets in the OT were certainly not praised. Most people hated them, honestly! My husband has had to give a few prophetic words, in which he had the Holy Spirit speak some correction that he felt he needed to say out of obedience, and it is never fun. Usually when he gives these words too, there is the suspicion that he is doing so in his own anger or frustrations. The last time he did so, my husband wasn't even upset at all. He was surprised that God wanted him to say what he said. (There were other things that if he had been allowed to speak up about he would have as he cared more about those issues but he was told to be silent.) So it isn't about speaking what we want to say, it is about being obedient to what the Spirit wills.

A great resource on the prophetic that I really appreciated was a book by John Bevere called "Thus Said the Lord." https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001NEK9WQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

But there are some ministers that do operate in the gifts and had words for people, and even names perhaps, and the Lord is using them to show people that He knows their name and really does care about them. So we need to be careful not to be too critical of the gifts in operation, but we need to be wise. I was listening to one prophetic minister at our church months ago and I was thinking that it would have been nice if he had a word for me. Then the Holy Spirit really convicted me because he said, "You don't need him to give you a word from me. I can speak to you anytime."

Anyway, I pray you will seek the give of the gifts though. Seek more of Jesus and the Holy Spirit and pray for discernment so that you can tell what is really of Him and what is not! God bless. :)

As someone training to be a worship leader, let me try to explain Christian music:

Our goal as Christian musicians is to draw both the minds and the hearts of the listeners to worshiping God. This has two interesting ramifications:

• Some songs are lyrically repetitive or simple because the songwriters are trying to teach a congregation specific doctrines embedded in the lyrics.
  
  
• We, as musicians, should not be trying to draw attention to ourselves. This means that we need to play and arrange our music such that it's exciting enough to elevate the emotions, but not musical to the point where we're showing off.
  
  The second point is interesting to me, because I know lots of incredibly talented musicians in praise bands who intentionally tone down their musicality so that it doesn't distract the congregation.
  
  TL;DR: Sometimes Christian music is intentionally simple so as not to draw attention to the musicians. Repetitive lyrics call attention to the words sung.
  
  On the other hand, I do like to listen to musically and lyrically complex Christian music on my own time. Some examples that I hope you can enjoy:
  
  "Down to the River" by Enfield, the praise team at Grace Community Church. All the members of the band are music majors, and the guitarist is close to earning his Ph.D.
  
  "By Faith" by Keith and Kristyn Getty, an Irish couple who have written a lot of new hymns we sing in the church these days.
  
  "The Answer" by Shane and Shane; their lyrics are less doctrinally rich compared to the other songs I've posted, but the guitar is some of the best I've ever heard.
  
  Also, this is a book I'm currently studying--Worship Matters by Bob Kauflin, in case you were interested in learning more about the subject.
  
  If anyone has any more questions, feel free to ask.

There's a lot to answer in this simple question. Here's something I've written before that might help, as it gets to the roots of the Abrahamic religions.
_
Which Bible are you reading? If its one of the millions of Bibles in the US, then its likely an English translation, and it isn't actually describing the god worshiped by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For that, we have to go back to the Canaanite religion, which we've learned about from clay tablets found at the Ras Shamra site. The Canaanites were polytheists who worshiped a great number of gods. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were primarily followers of El Shaddai, "God of the Mountains", another name for El Elyon, or "God Most High". El Elyon appears to Abraham in human form at one point. Jacob is described as asking El Elyon to become his elohim, or primary god, in order that he might receive special protection. He also climbs a ladder to heaven and speaks with El Elyon in person, and later even wrestles with El Elyon.

Its also not the god of Moses. Moses was a follower of Yahweh, the war god of the ancient Israelites. Yahweh wasn't a Canaanite god, but he also wasn't a monotheistic god. In the (likely mythical) story of Exodus, the Israelites even note after gaining their freedom "Who among the gods
is like you, Yahweh?
Who is like you—
majestic in holiness,
awesome in glory,
working wonders?." (Exodus 15:11) It helps the verses make more sense to get the full context; upon reaching the promised land, the Israelites stray and worship other gods. That seems silly in today's version; why worship Baal or Asherah when you know that there is only THE LORD? But when you realize that Yahweh was just the war god, as Ares was to the Greeks, it makes more sense. Once you're no longer in a time of trouble, why not worship Baal (god of fertility and storms) or Asherah (the mother goddess) instead of Yahweh (god of the armies)? And its a lot more obvious why the Old Testament god was so obsessed with blood and death; he was the war god, like Ares.

Yahweh didn't become the primary god of Israel until the reign of King Josaih, a strict Yahwist, in about 640 BCE. This was the period of the Deuteronomic reforms; it was at this time that the book of Deuteronomy was "found" in the temple, supposedly a new book of law written by Moses that placed Yahweh above all other gods. However, its rather convenient timing and the linguistic signature indicate that it was actually a forgery, created for political expediency. Even here, though, there is still evidence of polytheism, in the Ten Commandments themselves. "6 I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 7 You shall have no other gods before me." (Deuteronomy 5:6-7)

Only in about 600 BCE, when the Israelites were exiled into Babylon, did the monotheistic god appear. An author known as Second Isaiah had his words appended on to the original Isaiah, the book of Leviticus was authored, and the history of Israel was rewritten to say that El Elyon and Yahweh were the same god, and that this god was the only god. The other books extant at the time were rewritten to make it look like there had only ever been one god of Israel. So despite the story saying that this god has always existed, he only appears in the archaeological record 2600 years ago.

A very different picture appears when you know where all the stories came from, and put them in their proper historical context. The Old Testament just screams polytheism, even through the multiple rewrites and translations. I recommend A History of God by Karen Armstrong for more details. Or, you can find a good summary on YouTube from Evid3nc3.

_

You can find obvious parallels to the biblical creation story in the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth. It probably dates back to the 18th to 16th centuries BCE. The myths of the ancient Near East have their oldest expressions in the Mesopotamian and Egyptian beliefs, which date back to around 2500 BCE. So there were about 2000 years of religious traditions before the monotheistic god appeared.

Christianity first showed up around 51 CE, with its earliest known writings being the Pauline Epistles. You might note that this is 20 years after the supposed events related in the Gospels, and that Paul didn't say when Jesus had lived; we have no writings that mention Jesus that were authored during his supposed lifetime, or by anyone who ever claims to have met him during his life. This is rather suspicious, considering he was supposed to be perhaps the most famous person around at the time, based on the Gospel accounts.

I'm not as well versed in Islamic history, but the basic facts are these. Muhammad, who is considered by Muslims to be the final messenger of god's word, lived from around 570 – June 8, 632 CE. He began receiving visions that he thought were from god in 610 CE, and wrote them down as the Quran. He then transitioned from trader to religious, political, and military leader, and began the history of conquest that Islam is known for.

Hey was just looking for a past thread where I had explained it really well. So some of this is copy pasta with some added explanation for context. Sorry for the text wall I wanted to make sure I wasn't speaking christianese at you. Sometimes it's like a whole other language when you don't have the context.
I tried to link everything for you. Let me know if you have any other questions at all. :)

So first off I guess I should explain that our denomination is not like a traditional denomination but is an association of pastors with similar values. The current church government setup for us is a highly empowered senior pastor who is accountable to the church board, who is elected by members, and the National Vineyard board who is made up of other pastors in the association. There aren't too many strict rulings on individual issues.

The national board did come out with a response paper to the book Ken wrote in which they reaffirmed the traditional marriage arguments. I did not read the paper for my own mental health. It's available online if you're interested.

There is a Vineyard church of Toledo and I've heard they are nice folks but I have no idea what the pastor there thinks about all this. There is a wide range of views on any number of things depending on which Vineyard you attend. I know that their were other churches getting ready to at least put it on the table for discussion but I don't know what will happen with that.

I think that doing things this way is consistent for the character of our faith community here in Ann Arbor. Some of the LGBT community have stated that this doesn't go far enough but this is what the community in our congregation wants. We have a policy of our focus being on Christ and everything else being secondary. Also a bit more of the reasoning behind it.

As a bisexual woman with a mtf spouse it's been really good for us. I think that having this approach has both given us safe space and given people with questions room to ask without feeling weird about it. I'm ok with people not agreeing with me as long as they are respectful. Many of the LGBT congregants have expressed the same opinion. There are tons of open and affirming churches in the area. It would be easier to go there but that's not what we want. People just want to have the same rights as any other member and to be loved and supported.

That doesn't mean that anyone at our church is perfect or sin free.

Our church recently has had a bunch of congregational meetings on the issue because we are most likely being disaffiliated with the Vineyard movement over this stance. I mean that kind of sucks. But we're not backing down on treating LGBT members as equal so that means that this was pretty much inevitable. However, I feel that our church has become more committed to being together as a family. All discussions were very respectful and honored our commitment to God and each other.

We don't think as a whole that any beliefs beyond the Nicene and the Apostles creed are necessary to be a believer. We don't agree on many other issues. These issues are referred to as disputable matters per Romans 14.

Another example of a disputable matter would be remarriage after divorce. Most churches now accept this allow these couples and allow for full membership and communion. The Catholic church being a notable exception.

An issue that is not currently a hot topic in our church is the issue of what hell looks like, who goes there, and if it exists. We had this as a discussion about the time Rob Bell's book on the issue came out. Not everyone in our church agrees on that but it doesn't mean that we break fellowship over it or tell people who belongs.
In the 90's way before I attended creation theory was a big deal. We made room for people with differing beliefs. There are young earth creationists and biology students that sit together in our pews.

Also there is a book that Ken wrote A Letter to my Congregation

And an article here that summarizes it fairly well.

Man, I'm really sorry to hear you feel like your faith is slipping. I have some resources that I think can really help you, but please first and foremost pray that God would strengthen your faith. Rely on your heavenly father in Christ, and ask Him to increase your faith.

If you'd like to have a conversation via discord I'd be happy to speak with you about this. You are not alone in this struggle, and I've been through some of this fairly recently.

Ultimately as Christians we believe that a man named Jesus lived, claimed to be God, and proved it by predicting and accomplishing His resurrection from the dead.
If this is true, then He is God and what He says is true - especially that He is the way to be reconciled to God.

I recommend checking out Frank Turek. Without using the bible, He covers the breadth of topics that you are concerned about, from the reasons to believe in God down to why the Christian God. If you enjoy reading, his book is a wonderful, thought provoking read. if you prefer video, I recommend watching his presentation at East TN Univerity

I commend you to start doing some personal research on acquainting yourself with the literature defending the rational justifiability of Christianity. The work of professional analytic philosophers persuaded of Christianity like William Lane Craig and Edward Feser would be, I think, indispensable to your intellectual development if you would give them a chance. Reasonablefaith.org has amassed tons of material answering just about anything you could ask about or argue against Christianity (see the Q&A section, popular articles section and podcasts). His work Reasonable Faith sets out a defense of Christianity in general, offers various defenses of God's existence and explicates the historical evidence for some of the New Testament's most central claims (such as the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth).

Edward Feser's latest book Five Proofs of the Existence of God systematically defends the five most historically significant arguments for the existence of God, which have survived scrutiny and enjoyed wide assent for centuries, the present ignorance of which in mainstream atheism and academic philosophy says nothing about the arguments themselves and everything about the (pitiful) state of contemporary philosophy (not to mention the quality of religious discourse today). His book The Last Superstition is a more approachable but less ambitious project rebutting the arguments of and generally responding to the "new atheist" movement (championed by Richard Dawkins and his ilk).

It so happens that Dr. Feser was an atheist for about 10 years after he began his studies of philosophy and, subsequently, he experienced a complete shift of paradigm that he attributes to his studies of the arguments for God's existence and the general truth of Christianity. That's not to say he must be right or that he's therefore impervious to bias, but I hope it helps cast doubt on the popular atheist assertion that Christian belief can only consist in emotion-driven fideism.

I wouldn't expect to find every conclusion of both of these writers to be compelling or convincing (I personally disregard Craig's arguments from contemporary astrophysics simply on the grounds that the science they adduce is subject to future revision, for example), but the general impression I hope this will make to you is that extremely intelligent, reflective Christians who can offer an articulate and well-reasoned defense of their beliefs aren't hard to find.

David Bently Hart and C.S. Lewis would also be worth looking into.

As for critiquing the atheistic worldview indirectly, I think the points made in this essay are quite salient. In it it is argued that atheism is impossible to be lived out consistently and that, therefore, no self-described atheist is capable of manifesting logical consistency in their lifestyle or with respect to the peripheries of their belief systems and fundamental presuppositions about the value of human life, the meaningfulness of the concept of morality, and so on.

I should also add that educating yourself on theology in a systematic fashion would be extremely helpful in learning to defend Christianity (after all, you can't really defend an idea you have yet to completely understand or define). There's a long lecture series on Reasonablefaith.org under the "defenders class" with a curriculum on theology that I think would be an excellent resource and, perhaps, a place to start.

I'm also open to talking to you if you're interested. God bless!

I believe that what makes our life meaningful is the meaning we give it. If for you that means committing to religion, then it is good for you to do that. I've personally met a bunch of people who said they felt like you did before joining the Church and that it really turned their life around.

>Just looking for reassurance that believing in God could be a plausible belief system.

I've only studied Christianity, but I would say that it definitely is plausible. There is a long tradition of very intelligent people who have thought a lot about the issues of God and religion, and whatever the New Atheists may say the answers these people have come up with can't be dismissed lightly. I would recommend this book, and especially any of the popular work of Swinburne or Plantinga (note: haven't read this one, but heard good things about it and Plantinga knows his stuff), as an introduction to the academic study and defence of theism.

>The possibility of God is all I've got, if I want to defeat my suicidal thoughts and embrace life fully.

Go for it, and I wish you the best of luck (though I also second others' recommendations of seeking counselling, it was a great help to me when I needed it).

Selfishly I will hope that at some point you might come to see the meaning I see in an atheistic world and be in a better space to consider the merits of atheism, but it sounds like that isn't what is important right now.

Personal research, mostly. I'm a big history nerd with a slant toward religion and other macabre subject matter. I'm actually not as well read as I'd like to be on these subjects, and I basically blend different sources into a knowledge smoothie and pour it out onto a page and see what works for me and what doesn't.

I'll list a few books I've read that I enjoyed. There are certainly more here and there, but these are the "big ones" I was citing when writing all the comments in this thread. I typically know more about Christianity than the other major faiths because of the culture around me.

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years - Diarmaid MacCulloch

A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam - Karen Armstrong

The next two balance each other out quite well. Hardline anti-theism contrasted with "You know, maybe we can make this work".

The Case for God - Karen Armstrong

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins



Lately, I have been reading the Stoics, which like Buddhism, I find to be one of the more personally palatable philosophies of mind I have come across, although I find rational contemplation a bit more accessible to my Westernized nature.

Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters - Translated by Moses Hadas

Discourses and Selected Writings (of Epictetus) - Translated by Robert Dobbin

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius - Translated by George Long

I'm still waiting on Fed Ex to deliver this one:

A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy - William B. Irvine

Also, if you're into history in general, a nice primer for what sorts of things to dive into when poking around history is this fun series on YouTube. I usually watch a video then spend a while reading more in depth about whatever subject is covered that week in order to fill the gaps. Plus, John and Hank are super awesome. The writing is superb and I think, most importantly, he presents an overall argument for why studying history is so important because of its relevance to current events.

Crash Course: World History - John Green

Correct, for that time, and it's sad that the churches does not teach this correctly, but tongues also allows the Holy Spirit to pray for us in our weakness and edifies the soul. There's a great book about this that can help you understand - and it's free!

https://www.amazon.com/Walk-Spirit-Power-Praying-Tongues-ebook/dp/B00ARFNII4


“For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also. Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say “Amen” to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up. I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue” (1 Corinthians 14:14-19).

Hello! Your post has already gotten quite a bit of response, but I'll throw my two cents in as someone who chose to become a Christian. I'll try to keep it brief. What stood out to me was that you said you don't believe 1) That Christianity is the one true religion, 2) the bible is infallible, 3) and the Earth is less than billions of years old. Personally, I believe that all of these are false too.

3) This is the easiest. I would hope that any mildly educated Christian does not actually believe that the Earth is only as old as humanity. Christians loove science. It's great! It's the study of the world around us, the world that God created for us. So, anyone who insists that the world is only a bit over 2000 years...well...don't let them represent your view on the rest of Christianity. Here is a GREAT lecture on the book of Genesis. It tells you why we can not take it literally, and how our actual story on creation came about based on the culture of the time. (Skip about the first 20 mins, this is a college class and he's going over the syllabus)

2) The Bible is NOT infallible. It was written by men. Men who are not perfect. Most of these books were written decades after the events that transpired. Imagine you were in a crowded room and suddenly a large group of people come in there and start break dancing. Then, a year later, you are asked to write everything you remember about the occasion, as was every other person in the room. There will be incredible discrepancies based on how the experience personally affected everyone, and what things they remember. Now does this make the Bible unreliable compared to other historical texts? Well, how do you think we gathered information about other events in history? The bible is one of the most accurate and sound historical texts we have, but due to its controversial nature, people are more likely to point out faults, exaggerations, discrepancies, etc. The Bible is not perfect, especially when not read in the correct way. There is history, poetry, stories, and many other types of literature within this one book, and to take a metaphorical poem to be literal would be very misleading and incorrect.

1. This is the one that I will probably get the most disagreements over. I do not believe that Christianity is the ONLY correct religion. I believe it is A correct way to recognize the God who created us. I believe there is only one God, and many religions that follow this multi-faceted God in different ways. What gives me conviction in Christianity is Jesus Christ. I believe there is enough reason to believe that he died and rose again, and as far as I'm aware, there are no other major religions that have as much historical backing in a figure who claimed to be the son of God, predicted his own death and return, and then actually did it. Lastly, I do not believe that it is within my power or knowledge to tell others that their religion is wrong. How in the world am I supposed to know that?? I don't. I don't have the omniscience to tell anyone that their beleifs are wrong; I just believe that mine are right.
   
   Two things to read that I think would really help you: Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. This is light, insightful, and inspiring reading and would definitely help you out in your current situation. I know a lot of people have suggested this to you. Do it! The second one is I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist. This is heavier reading, but makes a great scientific argument as to why God is the most reasonable and rational answer to many different aspects of science.
   
   The last thing I want to leave you with is this: It's okay to have doubts. It's okay and completely understandable that you would have this period of disenchantment after leaving the bubble. Focus on the love of God, and use your doubts to strengthen your faith. Know there is not an answer for everything, and be okay with that. But there's nothing wrong with wanting to know as long as it doesn't tear you away from Him. Good luck, and God Bless!

The high God of Israel was accompanied by lesser Gods at the start of creation.^1

|Job 38:4-7

-------|:-----|:-----
"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?|
Tell me, if you have understanding.|
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!|
Or who stretched the line upon it?|
On what were its bases sunk,|
or who laid its cornerstone|
when the morning stars sang together|
and all the heavenly beings^a shouted for joy?"|
^a Heb sons of God|

The Israelite religion is heavily based off of the pantheon of the Canaanites:

Excerpt from HarperCollins with added notes:

>“By a remarkable act of theological reduction, the complex divine hierarchy of prior polytheistic religion was transformed into the authority of a sole high god in classical Israelite religion. YHWH…was not, however, the only god in Israelite religion. Like a king in his court, Yahweh was served by lesser deities, variously called “the Sons of God,”^a “the host of heaven,”^b and similar titles. This “host” sometimes fought battles of holy war…^c and were also represented as stars…^d These lesser deities attended Yahweh is heaven…^e Another category of divine beings consists of the messenger gods or angels. The angels carry Yahweh’s messages to earth…^f In later biblical books, the sons of God and the angels merge into a single category and proliferate…^g ”^2

The high God of the Israelite religion by no means served alone. This triple hierarchy (YHWH, the Sons of God/heavenly host, and messenger gods/angels) “derives from the earliest structure of Canaanite religion.”^2

The differences: the Canaanites worshiped El and his wife Asherah as the high gods. YHWH took on most of the traits of El, and Asherah was no longer worshiped, “although there are hints in some texts that she was worshiped as a goddess in some times and places.”^2 While El was highest authority in the pantheon, some the children of El were prominent deities. On the other hand, the sons of God in the Israelite religion are “demoted to a class of relatively powerless beings.”^2

On the subject of polytheism, the text also seems “to acknowledge that gods of other nations exist.”^2 Each nation has its own God that it worships, "but Yahweh is Israel’s god and is the greatest god.”^2 See Deuteronomy 32

Deuteronomy 32:8⌂|

-------|:-----|:-----
When the Most High apportioned the nations,|
when he divided humankind,|
he fixed the boundaries of the peoples|
according to the number of the gods|

as an instance of God "delegating authority [to the heavenly beings] to govern other nations". ^3 The Israelites would then originally be monolatrists, meaning they worshiped one high God without denying the existence of others. Re-read the First Commandment

|Exodus 20:2-3⌂

-------|:-----|:-----
|I am YHWH your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before^a me.|
|^a Or besides

for a different understanding of God’s commandment. This is by far the greatest difference in my opinion between the early Israelites’ understanding of God and modern Jews and Christians.

---

Notes:

|^a see Gen 6:2-4; Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7; Psalm 29:1 (list here)

|^b see Deut 4:19, 17:3; 1 King 22:19; 2 King 17:16, 21:3, 21:5, 23:4; 2 Chr 18:18, 33:3, 33:5; Neh 9:6, 24:21; Isa 34:4; Jer 8:2, 33:22; Dan 4:25, 8:10, 1:15 (list here)

|^c see Josh 5:13-15⌂

|^d see Judg 5:20⌂; Job 38:7⌂

|^e “I saw YHWH sitting on his throne, with all the host of heaven standing beside him” (1 King 22:19⌂)

|^f see Gen 28:12⌂

|^g “a thousand thousands served him” (Dan 7:10⌂)

---
Works Cited:

|^1 H. W. Attridge, ed., The HarperCollins Study Bible, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), p. 13, annotation to 6:1-4.

|^2 Ronald Hendel, "Israelite Religion, God and the Gods", The HarperCollins Study Bible. H. W. Attridge, ed., (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), p. xliv-lv.

|^3 B. M. Metzger, ed., The New Oxford Annotated Bible, (New York: Oxford UP, 1991), p. 261, annotation to 32:8.

---

Further Readings:

"Israelite Religion", HarperCollins Study Bible


A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliott Friedman.


Canaanite religion (Wikipedia)

> Can you recommend some good material for beginners? I'd imagine it isn't a great idea to jump right into the Summa Theologiae.

The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, which sketches out some basic arguments for classical theism and draws on thinkers from many religious traditions and cultures, is a great starting point for further exploration. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion by Brian Davies is an excellent book on the field as well.

> Why is theistic personalism more popular than classical theism? (I could be wrong on this, and it just may be that some of the more popular theistic philosophers happen to be personalists)

Many philosophers find it difficult to reconcile the idea of the God described by classical theism—absolutely simple, changeless, impassible, utterly transcendent, without a succession of different thoughts or emotions—with the idea of a personal God who cares about us in any way or listens to our prayers, and are willing to resolve this tension in favour of religious devotion. I have also heard certain rabbis make the argument that the Holocaust was such an evil event, God certainly would have prevented it if He were all-powerful, but why should it change our relationship with Him if He's only very powerful?

> Is Edward Feser a respected source for learning about classical theism? I enjoy his writing, and the man's insults are on point.

Yes. The Last Superstition received a very kind review from Anthony Kenny, and Stephen Mumford made it known on Twitter that he loved Scholastic Metaphysics. Feser has published on philosophy of religion in quite respectable journals like Midwest Studies in Philosophy and Nova et Vetera.

> Are there any Christians here, and if so, how do you reconcile divine simplicity with the trinity?

God is not made up of parts, and the persons of the Trinity are not parts. I think it is Christians who would reject divine simplicity who are in trouble with the Trinity, because if the three persons compose God, how can you say they are one? Yet there must be only one God.

The mystery of the Trinity cannot be proven by philosophical arguments, nor can it be in any way disproven. Our affirmation of God's simplicity is a fundamentally apophatic proposition; it is a negation of compositions found in creatures. While this is non-trivial knowledge about God, we still cannot presume to say what the simplicity of God is in itself.

Not long after I went off to college. I'd heard and read all the terrible things in the bible, but my loss of faith actually had to do with really studying the history of religion for the first time, and understanding how humanity's changing understanding of the world and growing sense of morality had influenced every major and minor change in dogma along the way. (Very similar to how I was able to dismiss creation when I learned about evolution in school.) I had already started to become more like a "deist" rather than a "theist" without realizing it, but I also had plenty of "religious experiences" that made me feel a personal relationship with god and kept me from dismissing it completely.

My first real challenge to my belief didn't happen until I investigated a church other than the non-denominational type I'd always been taken to growing up. I did this because my very serious boyfriend at the time was mormon (Who is now my atheist husband ;) and of course wanted to give it an honest look. But naturally I was skeptical. I looked on the internet for information, and to make a looong story short, I knew that it was untrue. (Like, literally plagiarized. Heh, literally...) But in researching one religion, I unknowingly started studying them all, and I encountered a lot of new arguments because of this (and just from being on the internet everyday helped with that too. Reddit was a big influence) and I remember deciding that I could not dismiss his religion or any other without truly looking into my own. So I decided to read arguments against everything I'd been taught, like a scientifically minded person is supposed to want to do.

Like you, I made a reddit post around this time, asking for sources and wanting others to tell me why they made the decision. Still identifying as christian, I didn't even know what information was out there, and what sources would be a best place to start. On that post I was given a link to this video series (edit: also linked by someone else) and when I had finished it I was an atheist. My "official" transition happened in just two hours, but really it made me realize how much I already didn't believe and taught me about a lot of other things about the bible I'd never heard such as the Documentary Hypothesis and the origins of Judaism. It was just my "last straw."

What you should look into next really depends on what might interest you the most or have the biggest impact. Here's a site that lists a ton of relevant books by category. Two I personally would highly recommend: "The God Delusion" which is fairly popular and a great place to start for a comprehensive understanding of the main issues, and "A History of God" is absolutely amazing for understanding the natural evolution of religion.

> Sorry again for the delay and length of the response, that was a pretty dense article for somebody who has been out of the game for a while.

Forgive me but your nihilist flair and admission of a Protestant past makes me ask for some clarification: Do you have a problem with the Catholic view and/or Protestant view of predestination? Is such doctrine a reason your now identify as a nihilist? I took a long journey like that in the past.

I once read a book titled: Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved? With a Short Discourse on Hell. I thought it was a good but difficult read and may enlighten you further if this is a huge stumbling block for you.

Looking at some of your responses to others the crux of the matter seems to be; if/why God saves some and not all is incompatible with an all loving/knowing...;? I am not sure what you are after as a nihilist but it seems clear Catholics and Protestants look at predestination very differently. I have never thought of my or anyone's salvation as predestined. I/all must cooperate with grace and mercy. If I (anyone) fail or refuse to cooperate I am assured of nothing despite my Baptism or lack thereof.

The only references to conditional predestination I have come across in Catholic theology that I can think of is blaspheming the Holy Spirit and the last of the 15 promises of the Blessed Virgin Mary. One destination is hell and the other is heaven, but both are still conditional to an act of will on our part.

There was a Polish Catholic nun who died in 1938 at the age of 33 from tuberculosis; she had mystical visions of heaven, and she records in her diary visions and conversations with Jesus.

> 1728

> Write: I am Thrice Holy, and detest the smallest sin. I cannot love a soul which is stained with sin; but when it repents, there is no limit to My generosity toward it. My mercy embraces and justifies it. With My mercy, I pursue sinners along all their paths, and My Heart rejoices when they return to Me. I forget the bitterness with which they fed My Heart and rejoice at their return.

> Tell sinners that no one shall escape My Hand; if they run away from My merciful Heart, they will fall into My Just Hands. Tell sinners that I am always waiting for them, that I listen intently to the beating of their heart…. When will it beat for Me?

> Write, that I am speaking to them through their remorse of conscience, through their failures and sufferings, through thunderstorms, through the voice of the Church. And if they bring all My graces to naught, I begin to be angry with them, leaving them alone and giving them what they want.

God wants all souls to be saved but we have a part to play in our salvation.

> A Certain Moment, May 12, 1935

> 424

> In the evening, I just about got into bed, and I fell asleep immediately. Though I fell asleep quickly, I was awakened even more quickly. A little child came and woke me up. The child seemed about a year old, and I was surprised it could speak so well, as children of that age either do not speak or speak very indistinctly. The child was beautiful beyond words and resembled the Child Jesus, and he said to me, Look at the sky. And when I looked at the sky I saw the stars and the moon shining. Then the child asked me, Do you see this moon and these stars? When I said yes, he spoke these words to me, These stars are the souls of faithful Christians, and the moon is the souls of religious. Do you see how great the difference is between the light of the moon and the light of the stars? Such is the difference in heaven between the soul of a religious and the soul of a faithful Christian. And he went on to say that, True greatness is in loving God and in humility.

> 425

> Then I saw a soul which was being separated from its body amid great torment. O Jesus, as I am about to write this, I tremble at the sight of the horrible things that bear witness against him….. I saw the souls of little children and those of older ones, about nine years of age, emerging from some kind of a muddy abyss. The souls were foul and disgusting, resembling the most terrible monsters and decaying corpses. But the corpses were living and gave loud testimony against the dying soul. And the soul I saw dying was a soul full of the world‟s applause and honors, the end of which are emptiness and sin. Finally a woman came out who was holding something like tears in her apron, and she witnessed very strongly against him.

> 426

> O terrible hour, at which one is obliged to see all one‟s deeds in their nakedness and misery; not one of them is lost, they will all accompany us to God‟s judgment. I can find no words or comparisons to express such terrible things. And although it seems to me that this soul is not damned, nevertheless its torments are in no way different from the torments of hell; there is only this difference: that they will someday come to an end.

> 427

> A moment later, I again saw the child who had awakened me. It was of wondrous beauty and repeated these words to me, True greatness of the soul is in loving God and in humility. I asked the child, “How do you know that true greatness of the soul is in loving God and in humility? Only theologians know about such things and you haven‟t even learned the catechism. So how do you know?” To this He answered, I know; I know all things. And with that, He disappeared.

> 428

> But I could no longer get to sleep; my mind became exhausted by thinking about the things I had seen. O human souls, how late you learn the truth! O abyss of God‟s mercy, pour yourself out as quickly as possible over the whole world, according to what You Yourself have said.

> 741

> Today, I was led by an Angel to the chasms of hell. It is a place of great torture; how awesomely large and extensive it is! The kinds of tortures I saw:...I, Sister Faustina, by the order of God, have visited the abysses of hell so that I might tell souls about it and testify to its existence....But I noticed one thing: that most of the souls there are those who disbelieved that there is a hell. When I came to, I could hardly recover from the fright. How terribly souls suffer there! Consequently, I pray even more fervently for the conversion of sinners. I incessantly plead God‟s mercy upon them. O my Jesus, I would rather be in agony until the end of the world, amidst the greatest sufferings, than offend You by the least sin.

• 741

You're allowed to want basically the same things the church wanted for you. You don't need Mormonism to fall in love with a great guy who's lifestyle and goals align with your own. It sounds like you may be very naturally religiously inclined and that's okay. As a matter of fact, you don't even have to believe in God in the traditional sense to have the same connection and focus on understanding God. Mormons do not have a monopoly on spirituality.

In some ways Mormons lead ascetic lives that aren't terribly dissimilar from monks or nuns. They abstain from much of the world's pleasures and concerns. They spend a great deal of time in religious worship and thought. They primarily socialize with each other. They live in a monastery of the mind, rather than a physical one. Unfortunately it's not a very good monastery, but guess what? Now you have choices.

I would recommend looking up Karen Armstrong and reading the Spiral Staircase. Armstrong was on her way to becoming a nun. Near the end of her Noviship she began to doubt, but her passion for knowledge of religion and God never left and she has spent her life studying it. You will probably be able to relate to her anguish and feeling of loss of the life she so deeply wanted to live. If you like it, read A History of God. Remarkably, Instead of remaining angry, though you certainly feel it, especially near the beginning, her intense passion for religious knowledge kept her intensely fascinated.

If you want to keep a connection to your pioneer ancestors you have to go beyond the CES letter. It's invaluable, but it's not designed or meant to take you beyond the point of disbelief. Instead or in addition to, read the works of believers who have studied the early church and it's people in great depth with both curiosity and compassion, rather than anger and nihilism. You don't have to believe what your ancestors believed to stay connected to them. Knowing Mormonism isn't true isn't the same as intimately knowing the truth of it's people and the time and place they inhabited. Put yourself in the mind of a historian who loves what and who they study and wants to get to know them, even in their flaws, beyond the faith promoting anecdotes shared at family reunions.

Start with Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, which is sourced from the RLDS archives and In Sacred Loneliness by Todd Compton, who is still a member.

edited to add: It would likely be too much for your family to handle now, but at some point you might look up the Unitarian church or the Quakers (underground railroad anyone). If you miss a religious community you can find one much more focused on actually doing good; not just self justifying busywork.

edited edited to add: Mormon Enigma and Sacred Loneliness should be okay to read in front of your mom so you also don't have to feel like you're sneaking around. Replace the fear with curiosity. It will be okay.

There's evidence even Mother Teresa seriously doubted the existence of God. It didn't stop her.

>humans just made this up and chose what to include and what not to include.

Humans made what up?

1. the bible? The bible is literally a library with different forms of writing. You can't read a myth as if it's history or a poem as if it's an account of scientific explanation - you especially can't read Genesis 1 like that because the scientific method didn't exist yet. I will (and did in my previous post) agree that they "chose what to include and what not to include". But, it's not as if they just randomly chose certain texts. They chose what they believed resembled their situation accurately and truthfully. It wasn't one person's history, rather it's the history of a people - first the Jews then the (orthodox) Christians.
   
   
2. religion? Experiences of "the Divine" exist, as such. Whether or not you believe in the Divine doesn't neglect the fact that religious experiences exist. Religions, broadly and generally speaking, are that which house a "lens" to interpret those experiences: the "why" and "meaning" of such things. Why did this happen? (Not how! science can and should attempt to answer that) Is there a meaning to this? The experiences of the given followers also influence the given religion. It's a mutual circle.
   
   >why would a being so powerful choose such a misunderstood way to communicate if his goal was to save us?
   
   This question is making some assumptions:
   
   
3. God is a being.
   
4. God has a goal for humanity.
   
5. This goal is "saving us".
   
   Number 1 is false to any classical monotheist. Here's a blogpost I wrote about the "nature" of God and evil. Here's a reddit comment I wrote which also touches this. I only link these because I don't have the time to figure out how to write it out again in my currently allotted time (work soon). However, I will suggest two books for you that are better written and that heavily influence(d) my thoughts: God Without Being: Hors-Texte, Second Edition (Religion and Postmodernism) 2nd Edition by Jean-Luc Marion. He is a French Philosopher. The second book is The Experience of God by David Bentley Hart. He is an American Eastern Orthodox Theologian. The second of the two books will be a little bit easier to understand as it's written for a wide audience.
   
   Number 2 could be false, but I personally think it's true. So, I'm going to assume this with you.
   
   Number 3 is wrong in the sense of the goal being to save us from eternal damnation. Read my comment (or blogpost) to get a better understanding. Long story short, to quote St. Athanasius: "God became man so that man might become God".
   
   But, to answer your question: Humans live and participate in different contexts. Whether it be historical, societal or even religious contexts. That is burden of our "imperfect" nature. Based on that alone, we will of course misunderstand things. I can say more, but I'm running out of time.
   
   >my point was that if we open up the floor to interpretation...just everyone making up their idea of what is right.
   
   Interpretations aren't just made up. To interpret properly is to situate and figure the given materials in their proper contexts and stories. This happens from science to art. I suggest reading up on Hermeneutics. I could suggest a couples books (sorry, I'm just bad at explaining things in a quick easy-to-digest way. Especially when it comes to topics our minds literally can't comprehend). New Testament People God V1: Christian Origins And The Question Of God by NT Wright which sets up what he calls a "critical realism" approach to scripture. Phenomenologies of Scripture, which is a collection of articles detailing how to approach the bible and related topics as they "give themselves". I'm currently reading both. The first is a more historical-critical and literary approach to the bible and the second is more a philosophical approach. Both really good so far.
   
   >but I suppose in that case I reject both your idea of God and the existence of God.
   
   You cannot deny "the existence" of God because that's an absurd statement. God is not a thing or even "highest power" that exists in some "realm" called "the supernatural". If that were the case, "Existence", as such, would be ontologically prior to "God" which doesn't make sense. The Divine/God/Brahman/whatever is that which provides "Existence" to "exist". God does not exist. Once again, I highly suggest reading my blogpost (I don't have ads or anything so I won't get paid) because it's better articulated. Better yet, read the book I mentioned by David Bentley Hart. I can send you (I think) a PDF if you want. I've provided a short reading and long reading. If you want a video instead, I can probably find one!
   
   Sorry about all the books I recommend. Reddit is not a place I can expound on philosophical ideas, especially when we both have different working assumptions that we need to clear. That's why I'm focusing on challenging your viewpoints on certain things because we just fundamentally disagree. We can't discuss/debate things without first agreeing on something.
   
   Also, I've enjoyed engaging with you. You seem open-minded enough and that's a good thing. So, thanks.

>1)I'm going to paraphrase here a little bit, but you can get the idea. It says in the bible that god created a rainbow after the flood to signify to Noah that he would never flood the world again. How can this be? That is like saying the refraction of light had never occurred before that point. I understand the idea that god can overcome science, but come on that is a little far fetched.

You find this the far fetched part of the Ark story? With the lack of geological evidence for a world-wide flood, or the accounting for Kangaroo's in Australia which are shown to diverge from their mammalian ancestries a few million years ago? I guess my question is why aren't you applying the breath of your scientific knowledge to the whole of the book? Perhaps Physics was your area of focus?

>2)It says in Revelations that a 7 headed beast would rise out of the sea when the end times arrive. Now, I know that a lot of people take the bible very literally, such as my family. How can this be interpreted because I know for a fact that this will not happen. This doesn't mean that what is described is incorrect, but simply miss interpreted.

Another option is it simply is a story written by people for people.

>5)According to Genesis the earth was formed before the sun. Is this something that people truly believe? Please, someone with a scientific education explain this to me. All I have heard is, God can over come universal laws no matter what they may be.

Most Christians I know tend to take it metaphorically vs literally as clearly by the Bibles account it doesn't match with modern astrophysics.

>6)The new testament was compiled by the Roman's and it is well known that books were left out of it. Man is flawed inherently, was something missed. Was god directing these actions? Can god really speak through people? Now, many people, such as my family, will tell me yes. Now, here is my problem with that. I have listened to sermons at church heard inconsistencies and scientifically incorrect interpretations be made by the minister. With that in mind, how can you gauge whether or not anything you hear "preached" to you is god speaking through someone?

The entire Bible has been edited many times.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bible/flood.html

>1) God is not some bearded guy in the sky. God is infinite, we are finite, we will never understand something as powerful and as awesome as "him".

Have you spent much time researching what some of the leading scientists say about the Universe? You don't need to insert a god into it.. Especially the Christian one which has enormous logical inconsistencies/paradox when you describe him as the omni-deity.

>2) God is all seeing all knowing. I believe this "being" has transcended us and is in vast complexity to the things we know. He has manipulated the universe, through science, to create us.

The god you are describing is what scientists refer to as the 'god of the gaps' IE as science learns more about reality the deities influence continues to shrink into the gaps of our ignorance.

>My goal here is not to offend anyone. I search and search around the christian community for a better revelation of who and why we are here. I just need something more then, just have faith. I don't feel that things are that simple. How can they be?

My suggestion for you is to read a bit on the history of the abrahamic deity and one of the most influencial skeptics of the 1900's.
http://infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/some_mistakes_of_moses.html
http://www.amazon.com/History-God-000-Year-Judaism-Christianity/dp/0345384563

>I’m genuinely confused, how is your faith in the bible different than cult members’ faith in their cult leaders’ words?

The difference between the Bible and a cult leader's words are pretty substantial.

• The Bible is a compilation of works which require a lifetime of learning, reflection, and discussion in order to contemplate their meaning. Its substance and weight dwarfs that of the average cult leader's flimsy theology.
  
  
• The Bible has an incredibly rich and historical literary tradition going back thousands of years. It is easily the most important book to exist in the West. The fact that the West's most significant and genius philosophers, teachers, historians, and authors held the Christian faith as central to their lives lends at least some veracity to the Bible's intellectual and historical substance.
  
  A charismatic preacher such as a cult leader has little but his words to legitimize himself. Thousands of books and letters have not been written around the People's Temple. There is no systematic and epistemological study of the vast majority of cults that matches that of Christianity or even the other major religions on Earth. Even most academics who are atheists and are not being completely uncharitable will agree with this.
  
  >Also, what is the single philosophical argument you find most impactful to your conversion?
  
  The Five Ways by Aquinas are good. But their function is not to convince people that God exists as much as it is to establish a foundation for the rest of Aquinas's theology. If you want a good book on the "essence" of what God is I would suggest this book.
  
  But honestly, the people who become convinced of God's existence are not those who read a philosophical proof and then believed. Speaking from the experience of my most intelligent friends, belief in God comes from the most unexpected places. One of my friends came to believe while reading a passage from Dante's Inferno. Another came to believe while going to the March for Life with their fiance. And there is another friend who realized they believed while arguing with someone over the existence of universal morality.
  
  My point is that belief in God does not come from reading a single philosophical or historical text. Rather, it appears from a complex blend of life experience, knowledge, and reflection. It is a long process that even the person himself may not notice until they find themselves at the cusp of believing. Another way of thinking about it is this: a war is often not won due to a grand battle; a war is won because of the many hundreds of skirmishes across many battlefields and points.

Hey there! So to echo what some have said already we are worshipers created to worship God. Our job as worship leaders is to help, enable and set an atmosphere where people can freely and comfortably come and worship. As a worship leader I have had people complain about song choices and lack of older songs/hymns etc. Jesus is our worship leader and under him is our lead pastor and then we come in the picture. I try to make sure my worship first is done in spirit and truth and is biblically how it was designed for the body. Second, that it aligns with the lead pastors vision for the church. Not everyone will be 100% happy with how we lead and that's okay! My best advice is to be completely respectful and humble when people complain and give advice and don't get defensive but be receptive and ask them more questions on why they think that way and then thank them for their thoughts. After you can pray about it, meet with the pastor to talk about it and take time to genuinely assess what they said and if there is something practical you can do or if you just keep doing what you are doing a pray for them. If you haven't read the book "Worship Matters" by Bob Kaughlin I would encourage you to. Great resource for all worship leaders/pastors.

Praying for you man and that God will reveal himself more and more to you as you lead people into his presence

This is from "A History of God" by Karen Armstrong (pp. 20-21 in the paperback version).

> The Israelites called Yahweh "the God of our fathers," yet it seems that he may have been quite a different deity from El, the Canaanite High God worshiped by the patriarchs. He may have been the god of other people before he became the God of Israel. In all his early appearances to Moses, Yahweh insists repeatedly and at some length that he is indeed the God of Abraham, even though he had originally been called El Shaddai. This insistence may preserve the distant echoes of a very early debate about the identity of the God of Moses. It has been suggested that Yahweh was originally a warrior god, a god of volcanoes, a god worshiped in Midian, in what is now Jordan.^17 We shall never know where the Israelites discovered Yahweh, if indeed he was a completely new deity. Again this would be a very important question for us today, but it was not so crucial for the biblical writers. In pagan antiquity, gods were often merged and amalgamated, or the gods of one locality accepted as identical with the god of another people. All we can be sure of is that, whatever his provenance, the events of the Exodus made Yahweh the definitive God of Israel and that Moses was able to convince the Israelites that he really was the one and the same El, the God beloved by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

^17 - L.E. Bihu, "Midianite Elements in Hebrew Religion," Jewish Theological Studies, 31; Salo Wittermeyer Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 10 vols., 2nd ed. (New York, 1952-19667), I. p. 46.

It's also worth noting that Yahweh originally was a mid-level deity in a Canaanite religion (as also detailed in the Karen Armstrong book and the book "The Evolution of God".) Baal was another mid-level god in this religion, which helps to explain why he's in the Bible. There are poems to El (the high god in the Canaanite religion) that have been found rewritten to be for Yahweh. In a literal sense, gods were transmuting and evolving in this time. This makes the answer to your question likely 'no'. But I'm extrapolating from the referenced sources. It's more like they didn't think about gods the way your question asks about them.

I've been asking myself some of the same questions, so I picked up A History of God and started reading.

I don't think there's anything pathological about your experiences or not praying, but the age at which you changed your habits may have something to with it. I was not tremendously religious as a child, but I did something similar - I could never sleep, and would always go down to tell my mom as much, and all she could do was send me back to my room. So, I started trying to banish my demons, literally - I imagined the earth floating in space, demons approaching from all directions, and there I was, in my bed, the sole defense against them. So I'd muster up all of my will and imagine releasing it, a tremendous blue sphere pushing the demons away, back to where they were the night before, so that for the next 24 hours at least the earth would be safe.

I understood even at this young age that these weren't actual demons; I understood that I was creating a metaphor and trying to resolve it in a way that could let me sleep. But I kept doing it night after night, and it didn't help any.

I've realized that, since then, I took to sleeping on my front. I thought it let me sleep easier, but that, too, came at a cost - as an experiment, I tried sleeping on my back again this month, and found myself waking up more quickly, fully, and more refreshed than anytime in the last ten or so years. I think what I had taken to doing was practically suffocating myself to sleep - I think the weight of my body was causing me to breathe more shallowly and fall asleep more easily, but also costing me rest. So I'm back to where I was in my teens: how do I banish the thoughts and worries that plague me at night?

Two responses, then.

One: If you're spiritual, read something like the book I suggested above and take to heart the ideas of a more transcendant deity than the one that Western Christianity favors. God is not personal; it is aspirational.

Two: No matter your religious views, consider practical meditation: prayer, buddhism, thinking about unsolvable problems in your favorite domain (for me, it's P vs. NP). Thinking about something that is impossibly hard to grasp, but that is interesting, can make the buzzing go away and allow you to fall asleep more easily and more peacefully.

I wish you the best.

My advice is to research research research. Like they say, make the truth your own.

Now that you found out the witnesses don't have the truth and you've spent your whole life deconstructing other christian beliefs you should start looking for the truth.

Look for it everywhere; in history, philosophy, theology, etc. I'm out and I study the bible from secular historians and I feel more spiritual than I ever did in the KH.

I don't know the answers to life, the bible might have a few but its obviously had a tremendous human influence. The cool thing is that we both have the rest of our lives to figure out the truth.

This idea that nobody has the answers is very comforting to me and just drives me to explore and research more and more. I'd suggest starting with The History of God by Karen Armstrong. It's an absolutely fascinating book and pretty easy to read.

http://www.amazon.com/History-God-Karen-Armstrong-ebook/dp/B005DB6LSG/

Feel free to PM with any questions, good luck buddy.

>How do you propose the universe came about?

What you're doing here is engaging in what's called the "god of the gaps" argument, in which gaps in our current understanding of the universe are filled with "god". There are two problems with this. The first is that "god" does not follow from "we don't know". The second is that the realm of things which are assigned to god is continually shrinking. It used to be that god caused everything from weather to disease to the changing seasons, but now we know better. The only two things which used to be assigned to god and which we haven't yet come up with a definitive explanation for are abiogenesis and the origin of the universe.

Since we're working on those, and have several good ideas, this position is not tenable.

>Gonna tell me that Jesus/God is not real? Prove it.

Yes. The "one true god" of judaism, which later became the god of christianity, was invented in babylon around 600 BCE, during the babylonian exile. It was built from a combination of yahweh sabaoth, the polytheistic hebrew god of the armies, and el elyon, the god abraham worshiped and the chief god of the polytheistic cannanites.

I recommend reading A History of God. You may also wish to read up on the documentary hypothesis.

>Don't judge us.

We judge you because religion causes large amounts of harm in the real world.

>The Bible helps me. Try reading it.

Many atheists became atheists because they read the bible. Have you read it cover to cover?

Warning: Wall of Text

I'd watch the video again. It took me a few times to fully grasp what he is saying - he covered quite a bit! If you have the time, though, I highly suggest reading "A History of God" by Karen Armstrong. Evid3nc3 pulls his material for the video I linked from Armstrong's book.

Simply put, the Judeo-Christian deity, called "God", is not and has never been the one and only god. He is a combination of a few gods from the polytheistic religions of the time and area.

[Please excuse this tangent; it's necessary. Armstrong talks about the evolution of polytheism (the worship of many gods) into monotheism (the worship one god, believed to be the only god) through two intermediate stages, Henotheism (worshiping a single god while accepting the existence or possible existence of other deities) and monolatrism (the recognition of the existence of many gods, but with the consistent worship of only one deity).]

So, there were a few polytheistic religions in the region, with a few dozen deities apiece. Certain areas began to pick "favorites". After a while, they began to worship that deity more than the others. Then, people acted as if the deity they worshipped was the only one that ever existed. They then rewrote their books to say exactly that.

Armstrong studied the ancient texts scrupulously, and realized that textual evidence supports this. The Genesis creation story is a plagiarism of the Canaanite creation story. The multiple names for "God" used in the Bible (Yahweh, El Elyon meaning "Most High") are actual Canaan deities! Hell, they even demonized other Canaan gods like Ba'al because he was the "favorite God" of a rival area.

What probably got to me the most was when Evid3nc3 mentioned the first biblical commandment. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." For everyone born into a Christian household, this is a bit weird. Isn't God the only god? Why is he forbidding us from worshipping other gods? Wait, hold up - there are other gods?? Seems a bit unnecessary for a universe that has only one god.

---

I'm sure I butchered the arguments and left some important things out, but that's what I found striking (at least, striking enough for me to remember from the last time I watched it!). His whole series is excellent! Basically, it is very difficult for someone to lose their faith because it has so many factors that all support one another. Watch this video, if anything. It explains why it is so difficult to shed one's religion.

Sorry for the wall of text, I hope you can take something away from it!

I can't tell you about dinosaurs, but I can recommend two life changing books:

A History of God:

http://www.amazon.com/History-God-000-Year-Judaism-Christianity/dp/0345384563

This book actually details how the God people worship today came to be, from older gods in older religions. It's a historical account of today's God. This will change your perspective on modern religion forever. It's interesting because, though the world is dominated by a few religions today, these religions are very new. They are man-made, just like older religions, but compared to the older religions, they haven't existed very long at all. Essentially, this book is a scientific look at the evolution of modern religion. Evolution of species is interesting in of itself, but the evolution of societies (religions, governments, nations, societal structures) is just as interesting. This is similar to my next recommendation...

Sex at Dawn:

http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Dawn-Stray-Modern-Relationships/dp/1491512407/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397836128&sr=1-1&keywords=sex+at+dawn

This book is a scientific look at the evolution of human sexuality. I think the most interesting thing about this book for me, was that it was the first thing I ever read that explained how the concept of marriage is a man-made concept, and is only a few thousand years old. So, for hundreds of thousands of years before that, humans and hominids did not marry. In other words, the idea of a life-long bond is not in our DNA. In fact, our ancestors lived MUCH differently than we do today, and, arguably, much better.

These two books will blow your mind. I think they are essential and are very easy to read. You can read both in a couple weeks' time.

Well, it may help to understand that when judaism first formed it was out of many folk stories that were then woven together to create a singular culture to motivate the judean people to "reclaim" their land in the north (Israel). Part of this was to make stories connecting the two peoples (the exodus and conquest of Canaan), but also it was changing the nature of God. Elohist sources seem to favor the northern part of Canaan (Israel), while Jahwist sources favor southern Canaan (Judea). It appears that over time the Jahwist way of thinking overtook the whole of the religion, changing it from the pagan or pseudo pagan Elohism into more modern Judaism by singling out Jahweh as the one true god or the true nature of god. There are a couple of very good reads on the subject, A History of God (which is summarized fairly well by this video, though I'm sure there are other summaries out there.) and The Bible Unearthed (which takes a look more at the cultures that the stories originated in and the archeological evidence we use to determine whether parts of the bible are reliable, in short some of the figures probably existed but nearly the entirety of exodus is unreliable as a history).

In addition to Mere Christianity here are a few more worth checking out. Despite the need for faith there is far more evidence for Christianity then I ever knew until recently. These are just a few of the resource that have helped me.

GodQuest

I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist

Stealing from God

The Language of God

The Fingerprint of God

I have put them in the order I would recommend reading but they are all great resources.

Another good resource for spiritual journeys are church small groups. A number of larger churches often have weekly groups or 6-8 week meetings geared for new believers and seekers. All the resources in the world are great by my journey was more shaped by talking through these things then anything else.

Glad to hear where your journey has brought you. I will be praying that God helps you find the resource and people you need to fill in the gaps.

> God created me, he gave me free will, but there's a catch, if do things he doesn't like I'll suffer forever.

I've seen this objection raised to Christianity more than once, and I've got to admit its potent. But I think it loses its power when we look at morality in the proper light. First, we need to dispense with the idea of God as some sort of cosmic rule giver, which paints God and his rule as arbitrary (See the Euthyphro Dilemma). We need to understand that God is simply Goodness per se; he simply is The Good. This derives from the concept of [Divine Simplicity] (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/divine-simplicity/) which Ed Feser's book "Five Proofs for the Existence of God" does a really solid job of explaining. Once this is understood, then we can see that sin is not simply a violation of an arbitrary command, but is rather a turning away from God (The Good).

In Catholic teaching, sin can also be understood as turning away from or disrupting the purpose of a thing (i.e. it is a disordering). We recognize that there is a purpose in nature (i.e. Final Cause), and when we sin we are acting against this order. Dealing with your example, mastrabation is not a sin because God has said "Don't jerk it" but because it is using a gift we have been give (sexuality in this case) contrary to its created purpose (procreation and union). An analogy would be your parents giving you a credit card for use only in emergencies, and then you using it for a tattoo, or some other frivolous purpose. Assume that the amount spent here doesn't matter because your parents can cover any amount you put on the credit card. Its clearly seen that this would have been a major breach, not because you have caused financial hardship on mom and dad, but because you used a gift of theirs in a manner explicitly against its purpose.

Does this help?

> Ok maybe the source isn't the best but that's not the only one.

Carrier says that it pretty much is. At the end of that review to which I linked, he laments that no one has replicated Grave's work.

But I'm happy to be convinced otherwise.

>So what are your reasons for Christianity not having ties with pagans?

This isn't how arguments work. The one making a claim provides the evidence.

But I won't deny that some pagan concepts influenced how the New Testament authors wrote. For example, Paul's use of ἱλαστήριον in Romans 3:25 almost certainly has some overtones imported from pagan Greek thought. But that's a far cry from Grave's suggestion, popular among the New Atheists today, that the whole notion of the crucified and risen Jesus is a myth taken wholesale from pagan thought.

I'll repeat my exhortation that I edited into my comment above: studying how the New Testament and early Christianity related to its own historical context is a laudable goal that I would commend to anyone willing to put in the effort, and there are good resources out there to help. Go to the scholars who are well regarded in their field, and avoid sensational, popular-level works. Ehrman's undergraduate-level textbook is a good start. For the more ambitious student, N. T. Wright's The New Testament and the People of God contains quite a bit on the historical context of early Christianity in the Greco-Roman and Second Temple Jewish worlds; it appears on many a grad school syllabus.

tldr; There are millions of us that feel the same way. I hope you don't forsake Christ in name in response to those around you who are forsaking Christ in deed.

__

I'm writing this during a break at work. Since I have to make it quick, I'll be recommending a lot of books. There is really too much here anyway to do justice to all of the questions you've put up, so even if I were to give a real, detailed response, I would probably have to resort to suggesting books anyway.

> 1.) I don't think that all of the Bible can be taken literally. I strongly believe in the sciences, so I think that Genesis was written either metaphorically or simply just to provide an explanation for creation. Are there others here that believe that or something similar? How do others respond to your beliefs?

There are many, many, many others who believe similarly. And not just recent people responding to evolution, there has long been a tradition of taking Genesis metaphorically. For a good group of scholars and prominent Christians that take a stand for a reading of Genesis that respects the way that science currently understands origins, see the Biologos Forum.

For a good book that shows the error of inerrancy, how it stunts your growth as a Christian and a moral agent, and how inerrancy limits either human free will or God's sovereignty see Thom Stark's excellent new book The Human Faces of God.

> 2.) Why does it seem that Christianity is such a hateful religion? I am very disappointed in many Christians because they spew hatred towards other instead of spreading love. I think that the energy that is going into the hatred that many spew could be used for good. Why aren't we putting these resources towards helping others? This would help bring people in instead of deter them away.

Again, millions of us feel the same way. It makes me sick as well. However, I don't think the answer is forsaking Christ in name in response to others forsaking Christ in deed.

There are many strands of the Christian faith that have strongly opposed violence of any sort. Look into the Anabaptists, the Mennonites. Podcasts from Trinity Mennonite are pretty good.

For a good book about Jesus and nonviolence see Jesus and Nonviolence by Walter Wink.

> 3.) How can people be against gay rights still? This is clearly religious issue and not an issue of morality. If you choose to follow the parts of the Bible that are against homosexuality, then why do you not feel the need to follow many of the other ridiculous laws that are in the Old Testament?

I'd like to stress that, again, there are millions of us that feel the same way. And many, many of those who still believe it's a sin think that we have no place emphasizing that in a world where LGBT teenagers are killing themselves from the humiliation. There are many, many of us that think that whether their lifestyle is "sinful" or not the only thing we should show them is love.

For more about interpreting the Bible in light of today's social issues, see Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis by William J. Webb and Sex and the Single Savior by Dale B. Martin.

> Do you believe that the government has the right to say who can and cannot get married? Why can't this just be left up to each individual church?

I'm actually strongly in favor of civil unions for everyone. I wholeheartedly agree that I don't want the government defining marriage... and the only way for the government not to define marriage is for the government to take its hands off marriage altogether; whatever the sexual orientation of those getting married.

> 4.) This was a question that I was asked in my other post that I was unable to answer.

Yes, the penal satisfaction view of atonement has its shortcomings. It's not a completely bankrupt idea, but it takes a lot of nuance to convey it in a way that isn't altogether abhorrent and senseless.

The first Christians believed something similar to what we call today "Christus Victor" atonement.

For a picture of the varied atonement theories available for understanding what Jesus did on the cross, see A Community Called Atonement by Scot McKnight. For a list of ways to understand atonement in a contemporary context, see Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross by Mark D. Baker. For more on a view of God that is consistent with the love of God as revealed in Jesus, see Rob Bell's Love Wins: A book about heaven, hell, and the fate of every person that ever lived.

> 5.) I asked this in the other post, so I feel that I should ask it here. How many of you do or will teach your children about other religions? Will you present them as options or will you completely write them off?

I'd be wholeheartedly open to exposing them to other religions. And I'd want to do it in a way that does them justice. Most Christian "worldviews" books frustrate me due to the way they portray other's religions. In the long run if you don't accurately portray the rest of the world and you try to shelter your children from it, they'll simply feel betrayed when they grow up and finally learn what's out there.

I believe Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. I actually believe this. Why wouldn't I try to raise my children as Christians?

But again, I wouldn't want to misrepresent the other religions and I certainly wouldn't want to shelter my children from them. For a book that I feel shows the good from many of the world's most prominent religions, see Huston Smith's The World's Religions.

So, first, and I realize this isn't exactly comforting, but there will be a freak out time no matter what. There will be some time where you feel like the world is ending, and no matter what you do, it will still feel that way. It was that way for me (though we aren't the same, so maybe your experience will differ): every night, up late, praying and sweating and crying. Is there someone in the real world you can talk to? Having a meat body to grab onto for comfort is huge. Also, I wish I'd known about Reddit (not sure if it existed yet) when I went through my biz. This subreddit would have been amazing.

Ironically, part of what pushed me out of Christianity was learning more about it: being really on fire for it. When you learn church history from the church, it's very skewed and specialized, but when you step out of that and examine it from an objective historical point of view, things get crazy. And more calming.

In case you missed it elsewhere in this thread, John Shelby Spong was very comforting for me.

I think A History of God gets mentioned on this sub at least once a day. It's not an easy read, but immensely illuminating as it shows that, essentially, the guy we call god with a capital G is really just a lesser Canaanite deity worshiped by an insane shepherd. But because of Abraham's weird life, all of western history plays out.

It's been awhile since I read Jesus Interrupted, but if I remember correctly, it's about how what the historical Jesus probably said (because we can't possibly know) has been manipulated by history to satisfy different political goals.

Zealot tries to recreate to the best of the author's ability Jesus' world, the philosophies he grew up with, and the philosophies he most likely would have taught. Some parts of this read like an amazing novel, and it has some crazy historical stuff. It really blew my mind.

I read Pagan Christianity right at the start of my dark night. I've mentioned it before, and it confirmed a lot of my suspicions about Christianity actually being fancied up paganism (Zealot discusses that a little as well). It's written from very much a contemporary Christian perspective, so it has some errors that drive me nuts: i.e. Jesus almost certainly wouldn't have ever meant he and god were literally the same, because no half-serious Jewish person of any era would assert that.

It's stupid late where I am (and my toddler already makes sure I'm constantly sleep deprived), so the last thing I'll leave you with:

When I was going through my "dark night of the soul," I still considered myself Christian afterward for quite awhile. It's just that the kind of Christian I felt I had become was so radically different from what I had been that it warranted night sweats and crying. Since then, each progressive deconversion has been less and less painful by magnitudes. But while I was going through it, I kept thinking about a quote in some book I'd read about how, "God made you with the brain you have, the talents you have, the interests you have, and the curiosity you have: pursue that and glorify god." I reasoned (and I feel this is pretty solid) that if god were real, he'd have to be so outside our everyday experience that no one is getting it right; because if he weren't that alien to us, if he was even slightly comprehensible, he couldn't be god. And if god were real, he'd (it?) know how incomprehensible he is, and unless he were insane or evil, he couldn't possibly be just in punishing us for doing whatever we thought was best and in good conscience. The process was still painful, but it definitely made me feel better about ripping off that hairy band-aid.

If you don't already, I'd recommend writing as you go through all this. If you can stomach it, put it some place public, like a blog, so people can bear witness.

Dammit. I said I was going to bed 20 minutes ago.

Sorry-but-not-sorry for the wall of text.

Sure, so apart from a lack of reason to accept those extraordinary claims I listed before, I would also defend the statement that we have firm evidence that Christianity is a human invention, a simple product of human culture.

This should not be too outlandish a claim, as even Christians can probably agree that most of the worlds religions are creations of our changing society (after all, Christians probably would disagree that Hinduism, paganism, Nordic, Hellenistic, aboriginal religions were divinely inspired/authored).

By looking back into the origins of Christianity, and the origins of the Judaic system from which it is derived, we can very clearly see changes in religious deities and stories, as the religion began incorporating myths from surrounding areas and as general patterns of beliefs changed. From what we can currently understand, it appears the the origin of Christianity started as a polytheistic pantheon with at least Yahweh, El, Baal and Asherah. It then moved slowly from polytheism to henotheism to monaltry to monotheism, as was relatively common in the Axial Age.

All of this points to the religion not representative of singular divine inspiration, and instead being representative of being a product of human culture, changing along with society.

This is a rather large topic of course, and if you want further reading, I recommend:

• [The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel](http://www.amazon.com/The-Early-History-God-Biblical/dp/080283972X) by Mark Smith<br />

• The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts by Mark S. Smith
  
• A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong
  
• The Religion of Ancient Israel (Library of Ancient Israel) by Patrick D. Miller
  
• Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches by Ziony Zevit
  
• Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (Library Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies) by John Day
  
• God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World by Mark S. Smith
  
• Monotheism, Polytheism, Monolatry, or Henotheism? Toward an Assessment of Divine Plurality in the Hebrew Bible, by Michael S. Heiser, PhD
  
• The Ascension of Yahweh: The Origins and Development of Israelite Monotheism from the Afrasan to Josiah by Andrew Halladay
  
• Are Yahweh and El the same god OR different gods?
  
• Ugarit and the Bible
  
• Israelite Religion to Judaism: the Evolution of the Religion of Israel By David Steinberg
  
• The evolution of God

You should read this book:


Spong is a bishop, and also very atheist friendly. He might help you reconcile your desire for a rational explanation with your desire to explore the dominant faith tradition of your culture.

I can also recommend this book, and this book. The first two are written by Christians, the last by a lapsed nun (but is both historically accurate and neutrally respectful of faith).

I will tell you one thing. If there is a god, you'd better hope he is worthy of worship, one who isn't a religious bigot. If god turns out to be one it's doubtful he'd pick the particular religion you settle on anyway.

So remember: atheist, Christian, or whatever, don't be a dick. The rest is explanation, go and learn.

I'd like to put out a counterpoint to a lot of the comments about "finding holes in the books" etc. You don't need to convince her that there is no God, Bible is mythology, etc. You don't want to come off as attacking her beliefs or from a side of negativity. You need to convince her that you're an adult, a good person, and that you've found another "belief system" that fits better for you and deserves her respect. You want to approach her as Carl Sagan, not Richard Dawkins.

I would highly encourage you to read Karen Armstrong (A History of God, or The Case for God). They're both not only fascinating books on the evolution of religion in general, but they show a non-theistic side of religion/spirituality within Christianity. She'll likely feel more comfortable with your lack of belief in a literal personal God if you approach from an angle of something WITHIN Christian theology. Another good view of this is When God Is Gone, Everything Is Holy, which describes the positive side of atheism and science. Maybe give her one of these books rather than The God Delusion--it's something she's more likely to read.

Ultimately, most religious people having their own different religious beliefs than they are with people rejecting their beliefs. Present atheism as something positive, inspiring, and fulfilling for you.

I can recommend some books.

For general theology:

• Being, Consciousness, and Bliss by David Bentley Hart
  
  
• On the Divine Names by Pseudo-Dionysius
  
  
• This argument and this other argument, which are some of the best out there for God's existence
  
  
• Summa Theologica by Aquinas
  
  
• The Last Superstition by Ed Fesser
  
  For living a Christian life:
  
  
• Way of the Pilgram
  
• The Life of Moses by Gregory of Nyssa
  
• Beginning to Pray by Anthony Bloom
  
  
• The Brothers Karamozov
  
  
• Centuries of Mediations by Thomas Trahearne
  
  For adjudicating between denominations:
  
  
• The Orthodox Way by Timothy Ware
  
  
• The Story of Christianity by David Bentley Hart
  
  
  Some essays and blogs:
  
  
• A blog, Glory to God for All Things
  
  
• Some essays, "Christ and Nothing", "Gods and Gopniks", "Daniel Dennett Hunts the Snark", and "Why Don't We Believe in Fairies"
  
  
  Do you need a denomination? Yes. All truths cannot be equally valid; therefore, some denominations must be closer to the truth than others. In the end, Christ teaches that the Church will be preserved throughout history. The question to answer for yourself is: what is the true Church? Obviously, I'm Eastern Orthodox and am convinced my Church is the fullest expression of Christianity, so read my comment as being spoken by a person from a particular group who has his own biases. Feel free to check out Orthodox Christianity if you start looking our way.
  
  Edited

>I'm hoping to hear from others, especially Liberty grads, who have had similar experiences of losing/leaving faith while or shortly after receiving an evangelical Christian education.

Not exactly what you asked, but I really enjoyed the book The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University by Kevin Roose -- Roose was actually just a college junior at Brown when he decided, instead of doing a semester abroad like many other students, to instead transfer to Liberty university for a semester, even though he wasn't a fundamentalist, as a kind of cultural exchange that he could write about. This wasn't really a de-conversion story, like Dan Barker's Godless, but it still provided an interesting perspective and I won't spoil the last chapter for you but there were some surprises based on what happened while he was there.

>If we are as freely able choose as God, how is God punished if he fails to love us? In fact, how is God punished for failing to love Esau? Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” (Romans 9:13)

I don't really understand your sentence. How does our ability to choose have to do with God being punished? Or even with us being punished?
We only punish ourselves by not choosing God, since it keeps us from living the abundant life we could have if we did.

As for Jacob and Esau, that's a quote of Malachi 1. In that prophecy, God is answering Israel's claim that God hasn't loved them, but showing how he has favored them in land over "Esau," which means the Edomites. Esau was understood to be the father of that people group. This doesn't mean that God literally hated the person Esau.

Likewise in Romans, Paul is quoting that to make a theological point about who is "in" as regards Israel, saying that simply being a physical descendant of Abraham doesn't make you a part of the family. It also shows that God in his wisdom chooses certain people for certain purposes, and that that is God's free choice.

Thus, this has nothing to do with whether or not God actually loved the actual person Esau. God clearly loves all people and wants them to love him back (1 Tim 2:4, for example).

>And who was the ultimate author of that temptation. Who allowed the serpent into the garden just as he allowed Satan to torture Job?

God does not tempt us (James 1:13). Satan does, because God allows him to. (I'm not sure I believe in a literal powerful evil being like Satan, but I do believe in evil spiritual forces.) Permitting something to happen is not the same as causing it. As for Job, God only allowed Job to be so tempted, because he had confidence that Job would remain faithful and not curse God.

>There you go again with that word "naturally", as though Jesus had nothing to do with it. Jesus personally cursed Adam and Eve for eating of the fruit (Genesis 3).

First of all, why do you keep referring to Jesus as the agent here? Jesus means the Second Person of the Trinity incarnate in a man, which hadn't yet happened...

God is not the "first cause of sin." Humans are the ones who sinned. God did not make them do so. God enforced the consequences of sinning, which are "natural" in the sense that they are a necessary consequence of doing things our way instead of God's way. I suppose you could get into the theoretical questions about whether or not God had to have created the universe in such a way that disobedience led to certain consequences, but that's a pointless question since there is no way to know the answer.

Per your obvious anger about God's command that they kill, I don't have an obvious answer. It's confusing to me, too. I could hazard a guess, but I'm not sure I even believe that, so I won't.

>Matthew 7:13-14 says that only a few humans will ever be saved. What kind of a dip shit god can only manage a .125 batting average?

That isn't exactly what it says. God doesn't manage a saved/unsaved batting average. God draws all people to himself, but some people refuse to accept him. Jesus isn't saying God damns anyone to the road that leads to destruction, he just says few people find it. If you've been outside of your house recently, you'll probably notice not many people are finding that road based on the number of assholes in the world.

Also, there are several people who think that eventually all will be saved. I'm not sure I buy that argument, but it is a viable option I think. Check out the book Love Wins for a very recent expression of it. (He makes good points, but his writing style is atrocious.)

Finally, we are under the curse of sin without our choosing, but it was our "parents" in the human race who caused that to be, not God. God is working out it in his time frame, but there are signs of the way things are in many miracles as well as acts of love and service in the name of Jesus. God, in his mercy, allows the human race to continue so that his church can witness to his name in hopes that all will be saved. Eventually, Jesus will return to inaugurate his reign whether anyone likes it or not, but when that will be no one knows.

Thanks for the response. I'll give a sparce reading list, as I find it pretty extensive.

Zizek:

• The Puppet and the Dwarf
  
• The Fragile Absolute
  
• The Neighbor
  
• The Idea of Communism
  
• Paul's New Moment
  
• The Monstrosity of Christ
  
• Theology and the Political
  
  Zizek has plenty of essays and talks floating around as well, but these books are probably the best--the first and second are the most sustained, the third is a lengthy essay making use of theological resources. The fourth contains essays by Eagleton, Vattimo, and Badiou. The fifth is one where he dialogues with theologians about St. Paul. The sixth is a debate with a theologian about theology. The final is a great collection of people all across the board, mostly Marxists, dealing with theology.
  
  Vattimo:
  
  
• Hermeneutic Communism
  
• After Christianity
  
  Eagleton:
  
  
• Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate
  
• The Gospels: Jesus Christ (Revolution)
  
  Eagleton also specializes in short and helpful articles.
  
  Badiou:
  
  
• Saint Paul: The Foundations of Universalism
  
  Misc. Authors too extensive to list:
  
  
• Jean-Luc Nancy
  
• John Milbank
  
• Graham Ward
  
• Simon Critchley
  
  
  Secondary Literature:
  
  
• Christ and Postmodern Philosophy
  
• Any of the "so-and-so and theology" texts. I know Badiou and Vattimo both have one.
  
  Hopefully someone comes by and expands this list. I've gotta get back to work.

My impression is that the most prominent objection of an orthodox Marxist to characterising what they believe as "religion" would be that they are operating with objective, materialist, ontological naturalist, scientific criteria, and that reject revelation, faith, spirit, supernaturalism and mysticism. Under orthodox Marxism, the concept of science encompasses a much broader definition than most modern philosophers of science or scientists accept, particularly those working in the analytic tradition. Here's non-Marxist radical socialist Noam Chomsky on the concept of "Marxism".

The various definitions and connotations that terms like "religious" hold are situated in a social and cultural context which changes over time. It's matter of semantics, and comes across from the Latin root of the word "religion" in "religio" meaning "obligation, bond, reverence" and "religare" meaning "to bind" . For example, existentially speaking, committing oneself wholly to the revolutionary cause would be considered religious form of life in Kierkegaardian terms. If you aren't already familiar with what I mean, I suggest looking up Kierkegaard. Sartre was attacked by many orthodox Marxists for trying defining the purity of Marxist philosophy with his existentialist philosophy.

Some Christian philosophers, like John Macmurray, endorse Marx's critique of religion as a valid critique of institutional and established religion as false-religion, much in the same way that Kierkegaard rejected the established church. Atheist Marxists like Zizek and Badiou claim that Christianity is the foundation of the only true form of atheism, that Calvinist soteriology provides the model for earthly salvation, and that the Saint Paul the apostle is the founder of universalism and the left tradition. Terry Eagleton is another prominent Christian Marxist who emphasises the political revolutionary character of Jesus. I'd recommend his Reason, Faith, Revolution and Why Marx Was Right as better introduction to Marxism for where you are coming from than simply diving into Capital etc.

It's often pointed out that Marx was an eschatological thinker. However, these tend to gloss over Marx's view of theory of praxis as dynamic. Even so, many Marxists and anti-Marxists alike take their cues from Carl Schmitt in viewing all political traditions as being historically derived from theological traditions.

When speaking of Marx and "Marxists", it always pays to remember Marx's famous quote: "what is certain is that I myself am not a 'Marxist' ".

> scholarly research

Here's book one of five (!), a 500 page monster by N.T. Wright. I'm about halfway through the second book now (thanks to a certain Pope). Wright is a former bishop in the Church of England and one of the major NT scholars right now. The first book spends a good bit of time on non-biblical texts and Dead Sea scroll material, all of which was new to me. It's a dense read, but it's good stuff.

>if the Israelites were the chosen people, why wouldn't they have believed in God from the beginning

Hm, I sort of get your concern there. But on the other hand, while the Hebrew scriptures are quite happy to say they are the people of God, they're just as clear that they've had a bad history with trying to follow the rules. (It's an interesting contrast to the Quran, which as I understand, paints a much nicer picture of all of the Hebrew prophets and other major players.)

Here are some ideas.

RC Sproul's Essential Truths of the Christian Faith is a great summary of many key ideas.

His The Holiness of God is a classic that packs quite the punch.

Also by Sproul, The Crucial Question booklet series is a great series of shorter booklets that explore a few important topics in a bit more depth without being overwhelming.

Sproul's What is Reformed Theology? is a decent overview that is pretty approachable.

Beeke's Living for God's Glory is a decent introduction that I think can be helpful in that it starts to unpack some of the broader implications.

Looking at creeds and confessions is also solid. Here are decent ones for the Westminster Confession of Faith (and this one too) and Westminster Shorter Catechism and the Heidelberg Catechism.

In case you want to watch instead, Ligonier Ministries will post 1 free video from their teaching series every day.

As for listening, there is Renewing Your Mind

I definitely recommend that you start reading /r/exmormon/ if you aren't already. And here is the recommended reading list for that sub.

I also recommend the following:

• God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens; especially the Audible version, which is read by the author and he has a great reading voice.
  
• Jesus, Interrupted by Bart Ehrman; really anything by Dr. Ehrman is great, but this one is a good place to start. He also has an interesting back story that he shares in just about every book.
  
• The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein. Finkelstein is one of the top archaeologists living in Israel today, and what he has to say casts a lot of doubt on some of the most important Bible stories. (There's a 90 minute video here, if you would prefer)
  
• A History of God by Karen Armstrong. Where did the idea of the Jewish deity come from, and how did it develop? (There's a 15 minute summary video here if you prefer)
  
  Should be plenty to get you started. :)

Each culture put their own touch on it.

For example, the Hindus came from Vedas, Muslims were Arabic pagans, etc.

What they did is took new ideas, and they succeeded by incorporating the old ideas. Which is to be expected. Nobody is going to simply give up their entire heritage.

Point is, for all their outwardly difference, many scholars still recognize a common theme, they are all defining ultimate reality for their culture. They all hold it is ineffable, beyond description, but then attempt to describe it anyways.

I highly suggest A History of God, the book I linked to if you're serious about knowing what many educated people know about theology. I know Sean Carroll considers the author, Karen Armstrong, a respected friend.

"The Traditionalist School was founded in its current form by the French metaphysician Rene Guenon, although its precepts are considered to be timeless and to be found in all authentic traditions. It is also known as Perennialism, the Perennial Philosophy, or Sophia Perennis, and as a philosophy it is known by Aristasians as Essentialism. The term Philosophia Perennis goes back to the Renaissance, while the Hindu expression Sanatana Dharma - Eternal Doctrine - has precisely the same signification."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditionalist_School
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_philosophy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_%28philosophy%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptions_of_God

>Conceptions of God in monotheist, pantheist, and panentheist religions – or of the supreme deity in henotheistic religions – can extend to various levels of abstraction:
>
>1. as a powerful, human-like, supernatural being, or as the deification of an esoteric, mystical or philosophical entity or category;
>
>2. as the "Ultimate", the summum bonum, the "Absolute Infinite", the "Transcendent", or Existence or Being itself;
>
>3. as the ground of being, the monistic substrate, that which we cannot understand; and so on.

Obviously, I'm advocating that 2 and 3 are what many of the religions were stressing. I think conception 1 is what many people think, but those with some theology know it's more about 2 and 3.

I know that I always thought it more like 1, which is why I was an atheist. Turns out, there is more to it than what I naively assumed.

edit: added link to Armstrong's book

Atheist Delusions by David Bentley Hart is really awesome. It doesn't spend much time on much of the New Atheist arguments, because honestly they don't take very long to refute. But he does spend a lot of time talking about the historical impact of Christianity, and dispelling historical myths about Christianity and the sciences/thought in general. It's also a hilarious read, Hart is a great polemicist. Only read if you can stomach stuff like, "The rather petulant subtitle that Christopher Hitchens has given his (rather petulantly titled) god is Not Great is How Religion Poisons Everything. Naturally one would not expect him to have squandered any greater labor of thought on the dust jacket of his book than on the disturbingly bewildered text that careens so drunkenly across its pages - reeling up against a missed logical connection here, steading itself against a historical error there, stumbling everywhere all over those damned conceptual confusions littering the carpet - but one does still have to wonder how he expects any reflective reader to interpret such a phrase. Does he really mean precisely everything?"

Terry Eagleton's Reason, Faith, and Revolution is also really good. It's a cheat for me to mention him, since he's not a Christian but a marxist; he does a terrific job of showing how Dawkins and Hitchens (what he calls, Ditchkins) make their argument on the cheap, however. In the end, he concludes that the problem Ditchkins has is that Christianity is far too radical for them. And that the Church has strayed from its radical roots. So it happens to be a good pro and anti-Christian work. Since I gave you an excerpt of Atheist Delusions, I may as well give you one from Reason, Faith, and Revolution: "With dreary predictability, Daniel C. Dennett defines religions at the beginning of his Breaking the Spell as “social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought,” which as far as Christianity goes is rather like beginning a history of the potato by defining it as a rare species of rattlesnake. Predictably, Dennett’s image of God is a Satanic one. He also commits the Ditchkins-like blunder of believing that religion is a botched attempt to explain the world, which is like seeing ballet as a botched attempt to run for a bus."

I suggest starting with the book The Experience of God by David Bentley Hart (here). It's a book that attempts to show what the major religious traditions traditionally meant by "God." It's extremely different from Mormon God and very eye-opening.

I remain chiefly interested in Christianity. I also have difficulty saying what I believe is "factually true" about Christ's life, but I find myself drawn toward Christ as a person: his wisdom, humility, and love. In short, I continue to desire to be a disciple, even if I operate with less certainty than I used to. Christ, as the archetype of the Good Man, resonates with me. For now, for me, that's enough.

If that view helps to produce good fruit for you in your life, then power to you. My study of the history of religion, and the way the Bible was put together has led me to see it though a different paradigm. I must ask, have you ever read A History of God by Karen Armstrong? It need not necessarily change your view, but it could help you relate to other Christians better, and allow you to at least understand the reasons that have compelled them to take a historical / metaphorical / sacramental view of the Bible rather than a literal / factual view. Good day and God bless.

So, reading the Bible is somewhat of a chore. If you're just reading it to say you've done so, or give yourself a brief glimpse of what it has, you can look here to get an idea of what each version offers. Some versions are more "modern" and use current language and syntax. They're easier to read but may include translations of words or phrases that may not be as accurate as others. On the other hand, some versions go to great lengths to be as accurate as possible and lose some readability because of it.

Once you've decided, you can go here to read a lot of those versions - or multiple versions at once. You can also find apps that do similar things - sword-reader, or something to that effect, and probably others.

There are also places like this that are geared towards atheists. They're often snarky, though, so take it with a grain of salt.

I think, and agree with weeglos, that you're better off reading something like this or this to get an idea of what it's about and the changes that have been made (and why).

I'm sure I'll get downmodded for this but,

Perhaps you might take another look at faith?
I definitely do not support faking belief, but at least looking into it will show her you care deeply enough about her to reexamine your decision. Also, show her that passage in 1 Corinthians that Such_is_Mango mentioned. (But I wouldn't recommend being confrontational).

(If you want to at least try this, The Case for Christ or The Case for Faith are excellent books. They approach the issue scientifically and historically and use mainly non-Biblical sources and list tons of references. They also focus more on the original Jesus, where love trumps all, rather than all the ritualism and occasional animosity that has been built up . . .)

*Edit: formatting and links

The Bible is the current state of an ongoing collaborative editing effort on an epic story purporting both to explain everything and tell people how they should act.

Star Trek analogy

By "ongoing collaborative editing effort," consider something like the Star Trek canon. It started with Gene Roddenberry and his first TV episode, continued to be expanded and revised by him, and then other people have contributed further series, scripted spin-off movies and fan fiction. Especially if you include the fan faction, you'll see that ST is complex, self-contradictory, and frequently illogical.

We know all this because we have detailed written histories on Roddenberry and Star Trek. But now imagine the following:

• Trekkies forced, by violence, everybody on their home continent to be Trekkies too; i.e. everybody needed to believe in the truth of the ST saga or be killed.
  
• the historical documentation was lost or never existed in the first place. All we have are subsets of the ST material edited and selected by ST fan committees from time to time.
  
  

  The actual history of the Bible
  

  
  (to the extent that we can know it)
  
  Bible scholars and historians have managed to piece together much of the history of the Bible using textual analysis and cross-referencing historical sources.
  
  Very roughly and as far as we know, the Bible is Old Testament ("the Jewish Bible") with contributions from roughly 1000 BC to 0 BC plus the New Testament "the Christian sequel to the Jewish Bible" with contributions from roughly 30 AD to 400 AD.
  
  The history of the OT is explained very well by Karen Armstrong in A History of God. A sneak preview of that explanation can be gleaned from this video and continued here. Note that the "Jewish Bible" includes a lot of material from cultures before the Jewish one, including (off the top of my head) Sumerian, Egyptian and Canaanite religious mythology.
  
  Judaism took a new turn with the arrival of Jesus (so the story goes) and branched off into a whole new franchise which generated a flurry of new stories during the collapse of the Roman Empire. Lots of detail about those books can be found by Googling for Bart Ehrman's books or videos.
  
  

  Individual contributions
  

  
  For the OT, writing style and other historic details lead researchers to believe that its books were created mostly by 5 main authors, whom we know only by letters assigned to them. That they were all written by Moses is part of the myth and not supported by the evidence. These guys didn't just neatly write one chunk each, but later ones redacted the work of earlier ones for consistency and updated ideology. For example, early versions supported ideas about multiple gods.
  
  The NT consists of letters ("epistles") by Paul of Tarsus, undoubtedly Christianity's greatest PR man, who worked hard to get followers of Christ in the Roman Empire to adhere to a common story; and of a selected and vetted subset of the "Jesus stories" ("gospels") written by (presumably) 4 main authors. These authors are known by names identical to those of 4 of Jesus' apostles but we can be pretty sure they weren't the same people. As best we know, the gospel authors never met Jesus personally, as they all wrote decades after his death. Many, many other gospels were not included. There's also some other material whose origin I don't remember - consult Ehrmann or Wikipedia for that!
  
  ----
  
  This is a summary off the top of my head. I probably botched up some details. Corrections welcome!

Number 3 is probably the biggest offender, followed by 6. We need GOOD writers with depth to get out there and write good songs. Also, my church has a nice blend of hymns and contemporary. Hymns on a guitar are pretty awesome. Sometimes, I prefer them more. If you're a worship leader or songwriter, a few books to pick up would be: Worship Matters by Bob Kaufflin, The New Worship by Barry Leisch and Contemporary Worship Music: A biblical defense by John Frame.

> The Bible was still legit

Take some time to learn about the history of the bible. For example, you can take the Open Yale Courses on Religious Studies for free.

Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Next, learn some actual science. For example - spoiler alert: evolution is true. Visit Berkeley's excellent Understanding Evolution Website.. Or, if you're pressed for time, watch this cartoon.

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

Learn about the origin of the universe. For example, you could read works by Stephen Hawking

Read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Learn about critical thinking from people like Michael Shermer, and how to spot logical fallacies.

A History of God - Karen Armstrong

In this stunningly intelligent book, Karen Armstrong, one of Britain's foremost commentators on religious affairs, traces the history of how men and women have perceived and experienced God, from the time of Abraham to the present. From classical philsophy and medieval mysticism to the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the modern age of skepticism, Karen Armstrong performs the near miracle of distilling the intellectual history of monotheism into one superbly readable volume, destined to take its place as a classic.

Excellent video based on the book.

Also: BBC The Story of God

The Story of God is an epic journey across continents, cultures and eras exploring religious beliefs from their earliest incarnations, through the development of today's major world faiths and the status of religious faith in a scientific age. The series examines the roots of religious beliefs in prehistoric societies and the different ways in which humanity's sense of the divine developed. It looks at the divergence between religions that worship a range of deities and those that represent strict monotheism.

I think you're being a little extreme about the Hitler idea, but in education it is important to have a good source and my source is good. Whereas your source doesn't state that the concept of mana was only used in the South Pacific. The idea of mana was in Sumerian culture too. We'll just have to agree to disagree. But, if you're interested my source is http://www.amazon.com/History-God-000-Year-Judaism-Christianity/dp/0345384563 it's an interesting read. Cheers.

Possible answers include:

1. Actually, nobody is good enough. The Christians you know are, on their own merit, going to Hell. The non-Christians are also going to Hell. The Christians are saved from Hell by grace "through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." A perfectly almighty and just God would send everyone to Hell; an almighty, just, and yet loving God manages to save some people on the grounds of something other than their being good.
   
   
2. It is certainly possible that a loving God would save people and let them enter heaven even if they do not manage to believe all the doctrines like they're "supposed" to, and whatever the condition is, it is neither being morally superior or being theologically better-read. "I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you."
   
   
3. Actually, popular theology is all wrong and that's not how heaven and hell work at all, and this is, though heterodox, Biblically sound.

If I can, I'd like to suggest a book. It's called Going Home by Vietnamese Monk Thich Nhat Hanh. It does a fantastic job of going over the parallels (and differences) between the two. This will definitely benefit you more than I could hope to do in a comment section on reddit.

The book is pretty popular so you may be able to find it at you library or order off of Amazon for $10.

> I was wondering if anyone has some solid, unbiased sources for serious Bible study?

They don't exist. Everyone has biases. The very best scholars are those who can divulge their biases and give reasons for them and reasons against the biases of others. That's part of the scholarly conversation.

For background stuff, maybe check out:
David Aune's The New Testament in Its Literary Environment

I liked Shaye Cohen's From the Maccabees to the Mishnah when it comes to understanding "Judaism" in the first century AD.

NT Wright's The New Testament and the People of God is very good.

I also really liked Brant Pitre's Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of Exile - a reworking of his Ph.D dissertation at Notre Dame (under David Aune).

Mark Goodacre's work on Q is good. I read it early in my academic career and it has kept me from believing in the Q theory since.

The biggest journal in the field is probably Journal of Biblical Studies. New Testament Studies is another big one (from Cambridge).

Edit: Also, learn Greek. There are grammars specifically for New Testament Greek (Koine) like David Alan Black's Learn to Read New Testament Greek - which is fine for an NT Greek grammar (though he barely covers the optative since it's so little used in the NT). I would just learn Classical Greek using something like Hansen and Quinn. If you can read Classical Greek, nothing in the Bible (either LXX or NT) will give you a problem.

Yes, kind of, etc yes. I don't really care to go into depth on this as I would be stealing the AMA.

When I say kind of on Hell, I mean its not the fire and brimstone that is so popular in the pop culture understanding. Hell is the ultimate separation from God and everything that he is. The place where he is not, therefore anything of him is void in that area. Love, compassion, joy etc. Hell is one of 2 choices then in this matter. You can choose God, and everything that he is, or you can choose not to be with God. It is not a place of torture and destruction, but it is a place that is devoid of him(God) and everything that he is.

When you look at it this way you see him as a God who is truly giving free choice in the matter. You chose not to be with God, he isn't going to punish you for that, he will just put you where your choice led you.

I'm really bad at putting my thoughts down on paper, and I almost didn't post to this comment because of that.

Now this book has a good explanation of what I believe hell to be. There are some parts of it that I don't agree with, or am not sure of, but the basic Ideas of most of the book are excellent. This book clears up alot of misconceptions about Gods character too.
In the end, it is about making your faith your own, exploring what it means to be a christian, praying and genuinely seeking the meaning of the bible.

Now can I be wrong? Yes,but my core foundation still stands. God is the creator of the universe, his son(him/trinity yadda yadda) made the perfect sacrifice for our sin, and he offers me life through him. From there exegetical studies of the culture and scripture must be made while taking into account proven facts of our universe.

Hope that's enough of a post for you. I would be willing to talk through PMs or IMs. I do not claim to be an expert on Christianity, and I know I don't have it all figured out, but that is part of the journey.

You may also want to read The History of God and Why We Believe What We Believe.

I have found some of my best reading by checking the bibliography of books with ideas that I really enjoyed and then reading the books that were referenced there.

The hardest thing for many people is replacing a feeling of certainty with a feeling of uncertainty. You may want to read Steven Hawking's Brief History of Time.

Some basic introductions to philosophy would not go amiss either. People have been tackling the "big questions" in much the same way, throughout all of history. There are not as many new ideas as there are old ideas, rehashed. Learn something about the history of human thought, it is pretty fascinating and will help you figure out what you think.

Atheist here, but I study the Bible from a cultural/historical perspective. You are correct, but you could expand on the reasoning a little more. In Abraham's time, people were polytheistic (i.e, pagan). Monotheism as a concept had not been developed yet.

Human sacrifice to gods was a common practice then, and families would usually sacrifice their firstborn son because it was believed that the fertility god would use up much of his power on the first child specifically. The sacrifice was thus thought to restore the god's power.

When Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isaac to god (specifically, the god El), he did so without question because this would not be against the norm. At the last minute, El stops the ritual, not just because Abraham had shown his faithfulness, but also to demonstrate that El was more powerful than the other gods at the time and such human sacrifices were unnecessary.

Of course, the basic story itself makes no sense to us now because we project our own sense of morality onto the past, even if we do not understand the context of the time it was written. Still, just because someone is an atheist does not mean he is more educated than the theists who actually believe this stuff. Educate yourself.


Source: A History of God by Karen Armstrong

One of the main and repeated sources Christopher Hitchens cites in his "God is not Great" book is Jennifer Hecht and her book "Doubt: A history: The great doubters and their legacy of innovation from Socrates to Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickenson. https://www.amazon.com/Doubt-Doubters-Innovation-Jefferson-Dickinson-ebook/dp/B003YCOORG/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=doubt&qid=1565131475&s=books&sr=1-7



While not argumentative it is full of careful study and resources.



Karen Armstrong and her "History of god: The 4,000 year quest of Judaism, Christianity , and Islam" is a wonderful read as well.



https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345384563/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0



I think the point about confrontation is a good one. So while there may not be many women debating about religion on the public stage, there are women writing great reviews of the development of religions.

Thanks for the reply. I've read your responses here and in the other AMA you did. I think it's safe to leave it go.

I will say that I don't find your reasons sufficient to believe Yahweh exists. You are assuming the bible contains more factual information than it does. You are entitled to believe whatever you wish, but if you want to feel fully justified in your beliefs, you may want to consider looking into the authorship of the books of both the old and new testaments.

A History of God, by Karen Armstrong is a great start. She is a believer, but her research into the actual history of the bible will either change your mind or give you a much more accurate history of what you have chosen to believe.

I read his book a long time ago and thought it was great. I don't know what he's like as a debater but from memory, his book was solid. If you're looking to check out apologetics "from the other side", I'd also recommend Feser's The Last Superstition. I haven't read it yet but it's well-known in Catholic circles to be one of the best books written against atheism (tied for #5 on our sub's top 20 books). Someone also recommended this book to me recently, you might want to check it out.

It's a big, tough read, but Hans Urs Von Balthazar's Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved? is a solid, theologically profound, well thought out, rooted-in-the-ancient-faith study that addresses your question. Von B. was a Roman Catholic theologian - JPII's favorite theologian - brilliant but deep writer.