You cheated and that can't be taken back. I would suggest you do research in the phsycology behind why you felt the need to cheat. Most couples can satisfy about 80% of their partners needs and wants. You may have felt compelled to cheat because the other woman offered the 20% your wife doesn't and it feels shiny and new. That shiny newness will go away eventually. Chasing the "golden haired woman" is a mistake. You are most likely not in love with this other woman. You probably have a love for the newness and the heightened levels of dopamine your brain gives you for finding a new mate. Again that will go away.


10 years ago you loved your wife enough to commit vows to spend a lifetime together. Think about that. YOU LOVED SOMEONE SO MUCH THAT YOU VOWED TO STAY WITH HER TILL DEATH! That woman is still there. Taking your marriage to a non-monogamous point just so you can continue your affair is very shady and doesn't solve the real problem. It will most likely tear you two apart due to the mistrust, and there is no guarantee that your wife will be open to non-monogamy.


Divorcing your wife would be a mistake as well. First she didn't do anything wrong so you shouldn't want to hurt her. Second your kids deserve better.


This will be an unpopular opinion but NEVER TELL HER YOU CHEATED! Why? Because it will tear her heart out. I've been cheat on before. It hurts... A lot! Don't put her through that, and don't pull the I need to clear my conscious BS either. Breaking her heart so you can feel better is despicable. And don't for one second think leaving your wife for this other woman will somehow be a better option. She has already shown you she is OK with cheating because she knows about your wife. Plus she knows you are a cheater and the whole relationship would be built on mistrust.


You need to leave the other woman and go back to your wife and family. Be the man she deserves and put effort into re-igniting the passion that you had when you married her. If you are feeling the flame dim on the passion and romance you better believe that she does too. Talk to her. Find things you can do to bring that flame back.


Here are some starter suggestions
-Does she like shopping? Take her shopping! Go with her. Yeah its boring to be a man in a Woman's shoe store, but I bet you did it while dating. Its not about spending money its about spending time.


-Is there an activity she wants to do but you don't like IE: hiking or swimming or a road trip. Do it for her. I'm not saying do something you will regret, but something small that she is into and you have declined in the past.
Real life example: My wife wanted to drive 400 miles on a particular freeway because it was a "scenic drive". I hated the idea and she knew it, but she loves that I did it anyway for her. I'm not saying be a pushover and do everything that she wants all the time, but let her have those moments from time to time.


-Do you have a little extra padding? Start exercising and very subtlety let her know its because you want to look as sexy as you can for her. Do not suggest she join your exercising but do invite her if she asks to join. Do not try to be her coach. Let her make any fitness mistakes she wants if she joins your routine. Unless of course she is doing something that will hurt her.


-Sit down and have a long talk about how you feel. Be careful not to verbally attack her. This is where "I" statements help.
"I feel that we could have more passion", "I want to know what I can do to strengthen our relationship", "I feel like we could do more to strengthen our bond", "I want to [any action or result] and want your help/opinion to achieve [said action or result] ect. If you use the word "you" then that talk may turn into a fight. Example of what not to say- "You never do [ ] anymore", "You do [ ] to much", ect. you get the idea.


So much can be achieved when couples just sit down and express what they are feeling inside. What to take a giant leap of faith? Ask her this question " What is it like being married to me"... I know terrifying. Then shut up and listen. Do not argue and do not interrupt. No "yes buts". Internalize what she tells you. Acknowledge what you have done wrong and express a desire to work with her as a team to resolve anything.


-Couples/ Marriage counseling or similar third party interventions. Most couples shy away from this sort of thing but it helps. You don't have to go for long periods of time. Even one session will go a long way towards helping. Here is a book that I think would help. http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Heart-Revised-Updated-Discovering/dp/1400200393 and here is the female side http://www.amazon.com/Captivating-Revised-Updated-Unveiling-Mystery/dp/1400200385/ref=pd_sim_b_1 You should read them both. Yes they have Christian ties but even if you are not a Christian the ideas and principles are still very valid. There is also a boot camp that goes with the book and if you can attend/ afford it you and your wife should go. Here is the link. http://www.ransomedheart.com/allies-home . I promise you the bootcamp it not a touchy feely lets hug and have a talk about our feelings event. It is a "this is how to be an awesome man" fun filled weekend. Campfires, cigars, gormet meals, archery, guns, and outdoor man movies to go with what they teach. Whatever you choose to do don't be embarrassed to seek guidance from a professional.


-When you two have sex do you make love passionately? or are you just masturbating inside her? Don't use her for sex... Give her what only you as a loving husband can give to her. Massage her body, caress her legs, smack that ass, run scratch marks down her back, whisper sexy dirty things in her ear, dust off your tongue and give without receiving. I don't know what she likes but you do. If for some reason you don't then ask her to guide you. Make her feel like a sex god. I challenge you to only penetrate when she is so turned on that she won't take no for an answer.


-Kids taking all your time? Get a sitter or send them to summer camp or a similar event that gets them away from you for several days. Your kids are important but so is your wife. A loving healthy relationship with her is great for your kids to see. Don't put your kids before your wife! She should hold more importance. Set a weekly time that you spend with only your wife. No kids allowed. It can be as simple as one night a week that the kids can't be in the living room while you two enjoy the TV (or other activities) just the 2 of you. And be firm if they try to butt in or suddenly start doing things to get your attention. Same goes for pets. Get them away.


There is a ton of other things but these are the basics and the overall idea is to spend more time with your wife. If you are having trouble finding that wonderful person you fell in love with then you better search harder. If you can't find gold with a shovel then you better get a bulldozer.


I promise you any effort you put into your wife and marriage will be reciprocated in full. It probably won't be instant, but she will respond in kind. This is about you too. You are going to feel fantastic knowing you can offer her your strength and power and love as a man.


Last point- Non-monogamy in all its forms is not a bandage that fixes troubled relationships. It is an experience that two loving people choose to do together to enhance what is already a healthy strong relationship. If/When you bring back that flame and you start seeing your wife as the "golden haired" woman then you can try non-monogamy. Do it as a team, together as a loving trusting couple. My wife and I swing. Not because we need things from other people, but because we enjoy sharing the experience.


I hope this does not come across and condemning or condescending. I believe in redemption and I wish you the very best of luck.



TL:DR: Don't take the easy rode. Fight for your wife.

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
  
  

Ace,
I’m sorry for the delay. Here I go.

A tiny bit about my religious history – raised Catholic, sort of against my will, got confirmed, stopped going to church for 8 years, found God/became a Christian, attended Baptist and Pentecostal churches for a while, and eventually settled on Episcopalian. And love it – if for no other reason than as an Episcopalian, I feel like I can be myself.

Worship – very similar to the Catholic Church. I believe it could be very easy for a person with Catholic background to feel comfortable in an Episcopalian church; after I had been there for a little while, I had to ask a friend what made the Episcopal Church any different than the Catholic, because they seemed almost the same! We rely a lot on the Book of Common Prayer, as was previously mentioned, which is fine and at least helps to standardize things. Personally, I believe Scripture to be a more authoritative source, but there isn’t anything controversial I’ve found about the BCP. Incidentally, on the online version (http://www.bcponline.org/) you can click on “The Catechism” (about ¾ of the way down), which is also entitled “An Outline of the Faith”. But overall, the belief system will probably look pretty familiar to you.

There are a couple points, I think, where the faiths diverge with some significance. One is in the level of tolerance and inclusion in the Episcopal Church – where I believe they are largely leading the charge among all denominations. In the Episcopal Church, there can be (and have been) gay and women priests and bishops, and in fact our former Presiding Bishop, who presided over the entire Episcopal Church in the U.S., was a woman (Katharine Schori). Our new Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, is African-American – and for some inspiring words, I encourage you to look up some of his soundbites (here is my favorite): http://www.episcopalchurch.org/library/video/jesus-movement. TEC USA is actually so inclusive that they were “sanctioned” by the Anglican primates - link here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/15/world/europe/anglican-archbishops-sanction-us-episcopal-church-over-gay-marriages.html?_r=0
Of course, some individual parishes are different than others – varying degrees of inclusion to be sure – but the odds are pretty good that you can find an Episcopal church where people can just be people. Which, to me, is kinda the idea.

The second difference, of course, is that there’s no Pope. I won't get into THAT debate, but since Christ preached that we could come to Him directly as our intercessor (Romans 8:34), perhaps it would be euphemistic to say there’s a little less bureaucracy necessary in the Episcopal Church. :)

Your point about TEC “dying”, statistically, is probably true, though I’d say it’s being pruned. I’d submit that it’s probably also true that typical church attendance nation-wide is suffering the same fate. Businesses talk about competitive advantage, though, and it is probably fair to say that TEC’s advantage is indeed its genuine confession that all are welcome.

For now, I’ll table the discussion about the scriptural arguments for/against homosexuality, and/or women as priests. I’d rather sum it all up – for now – with Romans 14:4: “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.” As someone who’s pretty interested in theological debate, though, and who's (I think) pretty open-minded to new viewpoints, I came across this link which you might find informative: http://www.wouldjesusdiscriminate.org/biblical_evidence/no_fems_no_fairies.html

At the risk of this post becoming TL;DR (thanks, by the way), there are a couple other points I’d like to make. First, as you search for the answers you seem to be seeking so earnestly, I submit that the only true answer is Jesus. This sounds hokey, Bible-thumpy, and trite, but I also believe it’s completely true. (I refer again to the title of Bishop Curry’s NYC sidewalk sermon.) A book that sounds totally cool, but which I haven’t read, is called The Case for Christ. (https://www.amazon.com/Case-Christ-Journalists-Personal-Investigation/dp/0310339308) I’ll let you do some research, but I think my version of Christianity can be summed up thusly: Christianity is simply about Christ. The rest are just details. Denominations, I think, are generally worship styles, and each individual church is its own unique organism, many of which you’d probably enjoy equally well. There’s no perfect denomination, and no perfect church…but there has been one perfect Man, who also happened – and happens – to be a perfect God.

Finally, with regards to your family dilemma, I’d have to just be up front and say that Christianity does come with a cost. Matthew 10:37 says, “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” Disciples and followers of Jesus through the years have been tortured, executed, cast out, etc. Discipleship isn’t always easy. My own story isn’t particularly exciting or theatrical, but I can say that I’ve experienced some of the cost. I can also say that it’s so, so worth it.

OK, friend, I think I outdid your post length - but only because this was what I needed to say. I’ll look periodically to see if you have any other thoughts, but wanted to get this over to you because it was important. I appreciate your desire for answers, and pray you find everything you’re looking for. Peace!

Drew

Bible Reading:

Most important thing when choosing a Bible: pick the one you'll read. It doesn't matter if you prefer it because of how the cover makes you feel, if that will make you read it, then that's fine.

Most issues with translations only kick in when you find passages that are hard to understand and you want a sense of what the original writer was saying. Then something like the NLT may be less useful, because it paraphrases more. The one thing I'd say is that I wouldn't recommend a full paraphrase version like The Message, because it has a lot of the writer's own interpretation. It has its value, but not for regular study.

If you want an easy to access but still good for Bible study translation, then the NIV is a widely used version. With your background in mind, howevr, the ESV might be usable for you. It's a widely respected translation that is considered good for serious study because it gets closer to the original language than the NIV, with some sacrifice for ease of reading. It's not something I'd necessarily recommend for someone new to Christianity, but given that you grew up in a Christian family, you might not find the vocabulary as daunting.

Regarding annotations: feel free to skip them. They are intended to aid understanding, but are not part of God's word. Therefore they are not essential reading, although if you want help understanding a passage they may be useful. If you find the length of the Bible challenging, you may want to consider a Bible reading plan - it will give you a structured approach that just makes it all feel a bit more manageable. If you want to manage the whole thing in a year (4 chapters a day), then try For The Love of God by Don Carson. If that's too much you could give one of these a try. One popular approach is to just alternate reading Old Testament and New Testament books (e.g. read through Matthew, then Genesis, then Mark, then Exodus etc), and then, because the New Testament is shorter, starting over while you go through the 2nd half of the Old Testament. That one's good because it doesn't matter how much you read each day to fit the plan. But reading plans are just a tool, if you want to just sit and read, that's also great, reading whole books in one go has its benefits even. Whatever works for you.

Other resources:

There are many, many Christian books available. But if you want a couple of easy recommendations try:

• The Cross-Centered Life by CJ Mahaney, it's super short but nails the essentials of the Christian life. Likewise Humility: True Greatness by the same author, also short.
  
  
• Mere Christianity by CS Lewis - it's a good one for the atheist mindset, as CS Lewis was very talented at explaining Christian ideas in a way that makes logical and philosophical sense.
  
  
• Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith by Mike Reeves - I confess I haven't read this one myself, but I love the author and I've heard him speak on this topic, and it really opened my eyes to explain the Trinity, which is one of the most mind-bending Christian teachings, yet it changes everything in an amazing way. Really worth checking out. Can also send you a link to his talks on it, if you prefer an audio option. He does some great church history stuff that warms my heart as well. We can learn a lot from those who came before us, and can shed light on our struggles and encourage us with their wisdom.

Op, since my comment is long, I'll make it into a few parts.

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First, I will like to thank you for resoponding to my comment, and waiting later on for my answer.

> Honestly, not a big fan of Wayne Grudem. Apart from his Systematic Theology that revitalise millennial's fervour and passion upon Calvinistic theory of salvation (man can only be saved by God's effort alone), I don't really have high regard on his other views (but probably this is coming from a Reformed/Presbyterian perspective). I might go back to Abraham Kuyper or Nicholas Wolterstorff to understand how Scripture can be applied to politics.

Likewise. I’m not aware of it [Systematic Theology] being overly controversial, but Grudem himself has been controversial lately by espousing unorthodox beliefs that God the Son is eternally submissive to God the Father, making many who read his works turn away from it- ourselves included.

Onto Grudem's work:

Yes, I think there is something inherently wrong with the idea of systematic theology.

Allow me to state first that I have great respect for many of the Church’s systematic theologians. Thomas Aquinas comes to mind. That guy was a stud. Augustine, Barth-1 Erasmus, Origen, Tillich, all make my list of “dudes I respect” (hrm…no women here…sad), and all engaged in certain systematic pursuits. I think there’s a lot to be said for systematic theology, but I do have a problem with it: too often it smacks of proof-texting, ignorance of context and genre and other literary concerns, and the inability to give the other side a fair shake annoys me to no end.

Perhaps no well-reviewed work of systematic theology annoys me more than Wayne Grudem’s aptly titled Systematic Theology. Grudem goes about creating his system by the aforementioned proof-texting route without paying much attention to the context. What is laudable about his book is also what is condemnable: Grudem’s conciseness. The book is so concise, in fact, that Grudem didn’t find room to offer any serious reflection on Scripture. There is a reason that Barth had to stretch Church Dogmatics out into 13 volumes while only covering a few of the very large categories-2 — because careful theology requires careful exegesis. Of course, to criticize Grudem for this is to ignore what he’s trying to do. Grudem’s aims were accessibility — Systematic Theology prefers to live on the bookshelves of lay people rather than professional clergy with an eye toward serious theological reflection. I get that. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make it less frustrating.3

So, here’s the thing. I’d rather take a cue from the greatest theologian of the 20th century (Mr. Barth), and focus on the paradox here. To me, what is most interesting and compelling about Christianity are the paradoxes. For example, Jesus Christ himself represents the most incredible paradox: God and Man in one. Serious reflection on this idea requires pages and pages and pages of thought to work out.

Another example of a paradox is systematic theology itself. Here we have a human attempting to systematize, categorize, and make easily referenced that which defies and even denies systematization. As Paul says in 1 Cor 13:12: “For now we see in a mirror dimly…” Sure, we understand some attributes of God. We can offer some kind of mental assent to God’s infinitude and the paradoxes inherent within (e.g., love and justice | eternal and temporal | etc.). But, at the end of the day, we only have a faint impression of his fullness. The best Christian thinkers are like Monet in his later periods, stricken with cataracts that alter his perception of color — we are painting a half-blind impression of the fullness of God.

So what’s wrong with systematic theology?

Infinitude defies finite system.

But, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try…

For example:

I am all for democracy-seeing that I live in a coountry that has its principles founded upon democracy. No matter how much I detest Grudem's ideals, there are some I support:

Wayne Grudem in Politics-According to the Bible, says that the Bible supports some kind of democracy.

> The Bible gives indirect but significant support to the idea that government should be chosen by the people (some kind of democracy)

> (1)The equality of all people in the image of God (Gen. 1:27; Gen. 9:6; James 3:9)

> (2) Accountability of rulers to the people helps prevent a misuse of their power.

> (3) If government is to serve for the benefit of the people (Rom. 13:4), the government does not exist ultimately for the good of the king or the good of the emperor or the good of the ruling council, but for the good of the people themselves.

> (4) Government seems to work best with the consent of those who are governed. (See: Ex. 4:29-31; 1 Sam. 7:5- 6; 1 Sam. 10:24; 2 Sam. 2:4; 1 Kings 1:39; 1 Kings 12:1; Acts 6:3. By contrast see: 1 Kings 12:15-16; Exod. 3:9-10; Judges 14:4; 2 Kings 25:1-21; Matt. 2:16-17; Luke 13:1; Acts 12:1-2.)

> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that thety are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. (Declaration of Independence)

Dr. Wayne Grudem: Scriptures Give Indirect but Significant Support to a Democratic Form of Government

As mentioned earlier, I like his views on democracy, not much so his views on Systematic Theology.

TLDR:

That said, Grudem’s Systematic Theology is a comprehensive work, and few people are going to agree with every portion of it. For example, I take issue with his lack of engagement with other serious theologians. I could offer a much longer, more detailed review of Grudem’s work. But such criticisms must be developed more fully elsewhere.

I will say that Grudem’s text is handy for getting some basics out of the way or finding passages that might speak to a particular issue. With this small criticism, his debating style is sub-par, [which is quite an essential part of the Christian faith]. I disagree with that small portion of the work, but otherwise, I still value the work as a whole- which is a sentiment we both share.

> I might go back to Abraham Kuyper or Nicholas Wolterstorff to understand how Scripture can be applied to politics.

Abraham Kuyper is a nice resource to check out, and his works- as explained here and here- offers a nice change to many Neo-theologies that seemed to gain a great deal of traction over the decades. However, I feel that some of his views rejects some of the most prominent doctrines in Christianity.

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.

The "problem" you seem to have is something that every Christian on earth struggles with - the disconnection between knowing something in your head and knowing it in your heart.

This is something I struggle with - there's a stark difference between being intellectually convinced of the existence of God and actually feeling like He exists.

There's a difference between knowing "Yeah, yeah, God loves me." And actually feeling the incalculable, unrestrained love of God.

There's a difference between knowing theologically that you're forgiven and actually feeling forgiven.

It's a difficult hurdle. Fortunately, God is there to help you.

God sends the Holy Spirit to us so that we can experience the presence of God, so that our knowledge of Him can drop down from our head to our heart.

For a long time, I sought an experience. I'm an extreme skeptic, so I'm always incredibly doubtful of any of the miraculous stories I hear from others. At the same time, it's because of this doubt that I so desperately wanted to experience God for myself.

I decided that, if I were to take God seriously, I would need to do whatever I could on my end to "press into" God and leave the rest up to Him. This meant that I would go to the front of the church during worship, or ask people lay hands on me and pray for me. As a skeptic and an introvert, these were huge steps for me. And many times, I wouldn't have a tangible experience with God, and I would get disheartened.

However, there have been a number of times now when I really did have experiences with God.

God lives in you. You have the Holy Spirit inside you; Christ Himself lives in you. However, for whatever reason, God sometimes gives us strong, palpable experiences and awareness of His presence, whereas most of the time we're not aware.

As someone who was originally skeptical of the "charismas," or of personal encounters with God and His Holy Spirit, I now urge you to pursue relationship with God.

That means spending time in prayer. I grew up always praying in my head with my eyes open, because I knew that God could still hear my prayers. However, I've discovered more and more that the act of going in my room, closing the door, kneeling, and praying out loud is richly rewarding. That's how people prayed throughout the Bible. I think that it helps me to connect that I'm praying the God of the universe, rather than just thinking to myself and projecting my desires.

For me, personally, walks alone and in nature have brought me closer to God. I'm someone who's always been deeply affected by nature - even in my doubt, I see the hand of the Creator in His Creation. And some of my encounters with God have been when I've been on a walk alone, not in a church.

Nonetheless, Christian community is extremely important. The Bible affirms repeatedly the importance of the church. If you're not already, try to attend church regularly and get involved with a youth group. I'm incredibly introverted, and in high school I would have thought I'd never be involved in a social group like that. However, our desire to know God should be higher than our desire for personal comfort. We need Christian friends and community surrounding us - people who will love and encourage us, people we can confide our sins and struggles to, people who will pray for us.

Worship is also incredibly important. I didn't used to sing in church. In fact, I went to a Christian school, and I would often remain seated during chapel worship. I was a Christian, but I thought that worship just "wasn't the way I connected with God." I thought that other people who are into praise music can connect with Him that way, whereas I connect with Him in other ways. While it's true that some people connect to God through certain channels more than others, we are all called to worship. I was making worship about myself - What can I get out of it? - instead of it being about God. Ironically, the more you make worship about God and not about yourself, the more you're bound to actually get out of it. This is one of the radical truths of Christianity - the more you give up of yourself, the more you truly are yourself. The more you live for others and for God, the more you're truly alive. It is more blessed to give than to receive.

Lastly, I must mention that good sermons and good books are really helpful, especially if your mind works similarly to mine. I mentioned in another comment Mere Christianity and The Reason for God - I consider them both must-reads for any Christian, but especially the one struggling with doubt. There are other good books, some specific to a particular doubt. (For instance, if your doubt has to do with the relationship between Christianity and science, then The Language of God is a must read.)

As far as sermons go, I really recommend Timothy Keller. If you have a smartphone or mp3 player, you can easily get podcasts for free.

I'll be praying for you. Feel free to PM me with any additional questions, or any particular doubts.

> 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

It's normal to have questions. It's good you're thinking about your religion.

>1 I heard the Bible has been altered (esp. the New Testament) by people so that they can eat pork, drink occasionally, not be circumcised, etc. However, the Quran hasn't. This is why my Muslim friends are all circumcised, don't eat pork, drink, etc. Like the stuff in the Old Testament. Is there any proof that the Bible is unaltered?

The dietary laws found in the OT are strictly for the nation of Israel. Most of them come as a sort of national penance for the idolatry at Sinai and were never meant to followed by the Gentiles. God elected Israel to prepare the world to see what election is grounded in (His gratuitous love). He choose a people who were of no account to demonstrate that when He elects, He does so freely and not because we bring anything to the table. He gave Israel the law to train them so that they would learn to grow accustomed to delighting in following God.

>2 Why did Jesus die for our sins, if anything is possible?

God did not have to become man and dwell among us (John 1.14) and be crucified for our sins. It was nevertheless fitting that He did so. Why? One reason is because it shows us what sort of love God has for us. He's fully invested in His creation. He knew from eternity that when He created this place, He was going to come down here and show His love in the Incarnation and crucifixion.

The Crucifix also inverts the world's expectations about power. Adam and Eve sinned because of pride, preferring themselves to God. So Jesus comes and shows us what true humility looks like (cf. Phil. 2). He doesn't "win" by power (though He could have), but shows His creatures what it looks like to love humbly.

>3 Why does God send us, who He created, to Hell to be eternally tortured if we don't believe (believe in me or I'll torture you)? I'm trying my hardest to believe and be a good Christian, but I have so many unanswered questions and doubts that are getting in the way.

Wouldn't Heaven for someone who does not love God actually be Hell? If they don't love Him now on earth, what makes you think they would enjoy Him in Heaven? It's not a safe assumption that the person who stood before God would automatically enjoy it. God has created creatures with a will because to love Him without being able to will it would be meaningless. It would be a sort of farce on God's part. However, that means some will freely choose to reject Him. If our wills mean anything, then God respects that and doesn't force those people to love Him for eternity (which is what Heaven is). I would read CS Lewis' The Great Divorce.

>4 Will God send those people who are raised in another religion, such as in Thailand (Buddhism), who don't have any external way of being informed of Christianity (like missionaries), to be tortured forever in Hell?

Some Christians believe this is so - that you're just out of luck if you happen not to be exposed to the Gospel. Catholics are not one of those sorts and I can only speak as a Catholic. For us, we follow St. Paul's thinking in Romans 2.14-15. Paul there talks about the natural law which is imprinted on our hearts by virtue of being created in the image of God. The Catechism says that the man who searches for God in another religion and does so earnestly is somehow being prepared for the Gospel (CCC 843) because all truth and goodness come from God. We trust those souls to God's mercy and justice, knowing that He is both.

>5 Why did God put a tree of knowledge if no one could eat from it? Like He purposely put the temptation there, knowing that at least some of us will be tempted to sin, and from there, be eternally damned.

Obedience which comes from love is the mark of the Christian life. CS Lewis' Perelandra does a good job at thinking about this. Basically Lewis says that there are sometimes rules which God gives which do not have a rationale on their own except that God has asked us to follow them. So in Perelandra, the woman is not allowed to live on the fixed land simply because God has asked her not to. By following this rule, however, she grows in love for God. She grows up, understanding what obedience is.

>6 Why does sin and the possibility of being sent to Hell for eternal torture exist, if God loves us more than anything? Doesn't He know that with creating humans, a lot of them will sin?

He does, but He hasn't remained aloof from the situation. Hebrews 4.15 tells us, "For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin." That's beautiful. Think on the Incarnation and the sheer gratuity of God's love in that act. Also see my above answer about hell.

>7 How would He judge agnostics? Like there are so many religions, and uncertainties, that some people will just gather from every religion that there is indeed a God who created us. Like people who follow basic morals like treating others well, but still do sins like, greed, lust (without rape or cheating), sodomy?

We don't know about any particular person who goes to hell. We simply trust God's goodness, His mercy, His justice, etc.

>8 Lust, masturbation, greed - why do those traits seem natural to humans, if they are sins? Like of course it's natural to look at the opposite sex and lust after them, especially when our hormones are raging.

Sin is the distortion of something good. Some women are beautiful. Recognizing their beauty isn't wrong. But sin warps our wills and desires, it warps our inclinations. Adam's and Eve's wills were in accord with their reason, but sin distorts this unity. This is why we do things (like sin) that we wish we did not (cf. Rom. 7). Neither lust, masturbation, nor greed are natural to man - they do not accord with the end for which God has created them (beatitude). Lust is an unhealthy fixation and a distortion of the natural goodness of human sexuality, which is given as a gift. Masturbation is the same - masturbation takes a gift meant for the sake of another (i.e. one's spouse) and misuses it for oneself. It takes something which is meant to be outward looking and makes it isolated. That's not what God created us for. Greed likewise is a disordered desire of goods. Any good thing we see on earth should point us to God, but greed terminates solely in created things and forgets the Creator.

I hope some of that helps.

I am listening to C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity right now and in it he goes over exactly this. Basically he says that saying one should do something because it's "good for society" or because it's "nice" is redundant and gets someone absolutely nowhere when trying to explain why someone ought to do or be something.


Instead this commandment to be good goes back to two things: The first is that God and Christ are good and all knowing, so when they ask you to do something it isn't as though they haven't thought through "why". And secondly, because God and Christ are good and something of them is within us (made in His image, as it goes) then that means there is something good within us that is worth respecting and nurturing because it is divine in nature. I like to call that goodness empathy, because without it we lack the ability to empathize, even with things we've not experienced.


Going off the second point, empathy is the best way to explain goodness for its own sake to anyone without a spiritual background. Empathy allows us to metaphorically experience the lives and situations of others without having to actually do it, and to some degree feel as they do in those situations. Because of empathy and the ability to feel as others do, we can discern the need to not do things to others, because it could cause a stir in us called guilt, or shame, or sometimes we can even feel the pain we inflicted on them, but within ourselves. Barring some kind of emotional perversion (read: sadism or masochism) we typically would not willingly desire to put ourselves in a state of discomfort, so ergo we should not put others in one either, lest we should feel that shame, guilt, or pain all over again. This is the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Without empathy the golden rule holds no weight, and empathy is by this premise something of a spiritual nature so it should be heeded.


To address your specific grievance, you must also consider the eternal nature of our lives. You're not inherently incorrect when you say that our lives are inconsequential in the scope of eternity, in fact I'm inclined to agree with you. However in the context of a spiritual progression, and one outlined by He on most high, it would be prudent to heed all what He has told us. We are told He loves us, that He created us all, individually, and that we are all, individually, the most precious to Him. We are also told that this life is simply a step in our journey, and the things we learn here and leave with are certainly not inconsequential because mortality has allowed us the ability to progress far beyond a spiritual form would ever allow.


Knowing this and operating under this premise, it is only logical to treat everyone well because we are all precious in His eyes, and to do everything we can to better ourselves because this is the greatest opportunity to do so. If you were given a kitten by someone you greatly respected, whose life and well being was in your charge despite it having its own free will, would you not cherish it (even if only to prove to whomever gave it to you that you cared as much as they did)? And if you were given the opportunity to go study under the greatest mind in whatever your chosen field is for the span of several hours, would you not soak up every single word they uttered? We need to be kind because we need to extend a certain amount of respect toward the work God has done to create us, as we are His children and He created us this way, such as we are, and He's proud of that. And we need to use that kindness and practice it here as mortals, because mortality is one of the greatest gifts of all.


Sorry for the wall of text, but this is pretty intense philosophy we're exploring here. I would also highly recommend either reading or listening to Mere Christianity, as C.S. Lewis is far more eloquent in explaining these things than I am since he was an educated philosopher, and I'm just a 24 year old trying to figure life out =)

Was it your SO? Was it your own choice?

We have 3 small children and I currently work full time in a nursing job. I was trying to do it all caring for my patients at work, being a mom, being a good wife, keeping up with the housework and all the kids activities and schooling. I found it was impossible to keep in top of it all and suffered a nervous breakdown a few months ago. My husband was the first to bring up me being a SAHM but I didn't initially want to as I was worried we wouldn't have all the vacations and frivolous things we currently can afford. My therapist then brought up the same thing and asked me if I was happy right now with my 1 vacation and year and frivolous things. The answer was no and neither are my kids and husband. We sat down and ran the numbers and we spend 50% of my salary on childcare and we were about to hire a maid so that would've taken more of my salary. The decision was easy.

How did it impact your life? Do you consider your financial stability is great on your SO's salary?

I'm not quitting for another 6 months, we need to make sure we have all our debts paid (credit card and line of credit) so all we will have is out mortgage. Things will be tight but the kids have been so happy since I've been off work. The house is in order, my husband only has to focus on his career and my kids can spend more time with me as I'm not struggling each night to get a days worth of chores (laundry, dishes, lunch and dinner making) done in a 2-3 hour period. Vacations are off the table as are pricey meals out and things like mani-pedis, but at the end of the day my marriage is stronger and so is my relationship with my precious children. Yes our finances are strictly on my husband but when the kids are older and don't need me as much we have talked about me getting a part time job that I can do when they are in school and still be home to pick them up from the bus.

Do you have any concerns about the future?

The future is never a given so I am trying to do the best by family and husband that I can in the present. If finances or health scares caused me to need to work again, I would in a heartbeat but for now this is the best for husband and kids.

Please tell me a bit about your experiences.

I head back to work in a few weeks and I'm dreading it but I have an end game in sight and a wonderful husband who supports me. He loves that I'm currently at home. He said coming home to a happy wife, clean home and happy kids is the best feeling as it makes him going to work worth it.

My biggest fears about staying at home are:

-SO meets another woman who contributes financially

I think this is a common fear for SAHW because their spouse us surrounded by other women 24/7. If you're keeping up with the housework and other necessities, taking care of yourself physically and mentally and are satisfying him physically I don't think there's anything to worry about. He chose you because of who you are as a person and if you keep up your end of the bargain he will too.

-SO leaves me and I have no savings /work experience

The future is never certain but if you trust him to marry him and he the same to you I think you will be fine. You just need to keep working on yourself and the house like it's your job, because it is. Don't fret over maybes, or you will drive yourself crazy. If he's a good man he will take care of you.

-Be poor

Money may be tight and that's a real consideration but if you are both smart with your spending and have a budget than it won't be that bad trust me. I highly recommend Dave Ramseys book "The Total Money Makeover" it changed our lives. I also can't say enough about Dr.Lauras book "In Praise of Stay at Home Moms".

Links to both books (both has a slight religious slant but as an agnostic I had no issue)

http://www.amazon.com/Praise-Stay-at-Home-Moms-Laura-Schlessinger/dp/B005SNO0L4

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1595555277/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1453678813&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=total+money+makeover&dpPl=1&dpID=51g2DdD31VL&ref=plSrch

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."

On science and evolution:

Genetics is where it's at. There is a ton of good fossil evidence, but genetics actually proves it on paper. Most books you can get through your local library (even by interlibrary loan) so you don't have to shell out for them just to read them.

Books:

The Making of the Fittest outlines many new forensic proofs of evolution. Fossil genes are an important aspect... they prove common ancestry. Did you know that humans have the gene for Vitamin C synthesis? (which would allow us to synthesize Vitamin C from our food instead of having to ingest it directly from fruit?) Many mammals have the same gene, but through a mutation, we lost the functionality, but it still hangs around.

Deep Ancestry proves the "out of Africa" hypothesis of human origins. It's no longer even a debate. MtDNA and Y-Chromosome DNA can be traced back directly to where our species began.

To give more rounded arguments, Hitchens can't be beat: God Is Not Great and The Portable Atheist (which is an overview of the best atheist writings in history, and one which I cannot recommend highly enough). Also, Dawkin's book The Greatest Show on Earth is a good overview of evolution.

General science: Stephen Hawking's books The Grand Design and A Briefer History of Time are excellent for laying the groundwork from Newtonian physics to Einstein's relativity through to the modern discovery of Quantum Mechanics.

Bertrand Russell and Thomas Paine are also excellent sources for philosophical, humanist, atheist thought; but they are included in the aforementioned Portable Atheist... but I have read much of their writings otherwise, and they are very good.

Also a subscription to a good peer-reviewed journal such as Nature is awesome, but can be expensive and very in depth.

Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate is also an excellent look at the human mind and genetics. To understand how the mind works, is almost your most important tool. If you know why people say the horrible things they do, you can see their words for what they are... you can see past what they say and see the mechanisms behind the words.

I've also been studying Zen for about a year. It's non-theistic and classed as "eastern philosophy". The Way of Zen kept me from losing my mind after deconverting and then struggling with the thought of a purposeless life and no future. I found it absolutely necessary to root out the remainder of the harmful indoctrination that still existed in my mind; and finally allowed me to see reality as it is instead of overlaying an ideology or worldview on everything.

Also, learn about the universe. Astronomy has been a useful tool for me. I can point my telescope at a galaxy that is more than 20 million light years away and say to someone, "See that galaxy? It took over 20 million years for the light from that galaxy to reach your eye." Creationists scoff at millions of years and say that it's a fantasy; but the universe provides real proof of "deep time" you can see with your own eyes.

Videos:

I recommend books first, because they are the best way to learn, but there are also very good video series out there.

BestofScience has an amazing series on evolution.

AronRa's Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism is awesome.

Thunderfoot's Why do people laugh at creationists is good.

Atheistcoffee's Why I am no longer a creationist is also good.

Also check out TheraminTrees for more on the psychology of religion; Potholer54 on The Big Bang to Us Made Easy; and Evid3nc3's series on deconversion.

Also check out the Evolution Documentary Youtube Channel for some of the world's best documentary series on evolution and science.

I'm sure I've overlooked something here... but that's some stuff off the top of my head. If you have any questions about anything, or just need to talk, send me a message!

Hey, welcome to the sub. :)

First off, you have the right attitude (more than many churchgoers, it seems). You want to understand and wrestle and have it be real. Good news: you're on the right track. Faith is hard, at least most of the time. I'm sorry others looked down on you for asking questions and trying to figure things out; they were wrong to do so.

I agree with what others here are saying: Genesis is probably not the easiest place to start, and you'll get even more bogged down in Numbers or in Chronicles. Start in one of the Gospels. I saw Luke suggested, and I'll throw in John. Luke's writing has more details, and John's might be easier to read.

Starting in the Gospels has a purpose: Jesus is really the major focus. There's a lot to gain from reading his words firsthand, and seeing his actions. You might find it a lot different from what the culture says about him. Take your time and soak it in, and I think you'll find him pretty compelling.

After that, Paul's letters are pretty great. Philippians might be a good one to read first, though they're all really short and won't take long.

I might also suggest reading a different version of the Bible. The NRSV is accurate, but can also be archaic and difficult to understand. There are a lot of debates over Bible versions, but don't sweat them for now; I'd suggest the ESV or the CEB (if you want to study deeper later, the NRSV might be better then).

You'll probably want to find a church. This can be hit-and-miss, depending on so many factors. You won't and shouldn't fit into a church that looks down on you for struggling with faith. To start, even though it might feel silly, talk to God about it. Doesn't have to be fancy, just a conversation asking him to help you find a good church. Visit a couple, and see if they try to follow the Jesus you read about in the Bible.

(And if you're in the Dallas area, let me know... you can visit ours! :D I know a couple other great churches in the area too.)

If you're looking for more resources, it depends on what you're interested in.

• www.biblegateway.com if you want to read the Bible online. Tons of versions (again, I'd go with CEB or ESV). I find it harder to read online, but it's good to have on-hand anyhow.
  
• I second Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. It's a great read with some heavy concepts explained simply (Lewis was fantastic at this).
  
• For the Resurrection (central to Christianity), check out Willaim Lane Craig's books, The Son Rises and Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?, and, for a debate, Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment?
  
• For the creation story, Reading Genesis 1-2: An Evangelical Conversation is a must, as there are several viewpoints on Creation (another reason starting with Genesis might be difficult).
  
• For doubt, I recommend Disappointment with God.
  
• How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth is a good one for... well, pretty much what the title says it's for.
  
• Along the lines of Mere Christianity, try G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy. It's free, but might be a bit harder to read.
  
  BUT... don't go crazy. Start with the Gospels and maybe Mere Christianity, and go from there.
  
  If you have questions about what you're reading, feel free to come to this sub or /r/TrueChristian and ask. To be fair, there will be several opposing opinions on more controversial issues, which is a double-edged sword sometimes. But most everyone is welcoming, kind, and happy to discuss anything.

> 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.

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."

Yup - arhat is just a term for someone who's attained the state of nirvana. With Theravada, practitioners believe that attaining nirvana / reaching arhathood is a more realistic path to start off with; the path to Buddhahood is extremely difficult, and it's okay to want to attain a state of personal bliss and stay in that for a very long time, before eventually progressing further along the spiritual path towards Buddhahood.

Mahayana practitioners also realize that it's an extremely difficult path, but the end result (Buddhahood) allows someone to accomplish so much in order to help all sentient beings that it's perhaps a little selfish to want to spend so much time in a blissful yet incomplete state (arhathood), when there's an option to skip that phase and progress along the path of bodhisattvas, which involves greater sacrifices but ultimately reduces the time necessary to reach Buddhahood (an even more blissful state than Arhathood, the state of ultimate bliss according to Buddhism) by a significant amount (many, many eons). Bodhisattvas are characterized by their devotion to the practice of bodhicitta - the desire to attain Buddhahood as quickly as possible in order to maximize their ability to help end the suffering & root causes of suffering for all sentient beings (the Wikipedia page on "sentient beings" is a good place to start, if you're unsure of what sentient beings means, in the context of Buddhism). Sentient beings are typically classified into 6 realms of existence in the Buddhist worldview: Gods, Asuras (demi-gods, with less enjoyment and more anger + jealousy), Humans, Animals, Ghosts, and Hell beings, and until we reach the state of Arhat or a certain level of Bodhisattva (it's complicated - the scriptures classify these levels in many different ways, the most complicated method lists 52 different levels of Bodhisattvas), all sentient beings are stuck in this cycle of infinite rebirth (reincarnation) into these 6 realms, depending on one's personal karma.

By the way, I responded to the question "selfish vs unselfish" Buddhism below, you might be interested in looking at that.

Personally, I base my practices on Mahayana (and the Vajrayana subsect of Mahayana) scriptures and texts. This is because most of the teachers I find myself admiring and feeling a strong connection to are Mahayana & Vajrayana lineage masters. While the Mahayana path is more difficult than Theravada one (this is acknowledged by many historical scholars & practitioners of both traditions), the Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions also provide many more effective methods of practice that allows one to progress along the spiritual path much more quickly than Theravada techniques. Most of my current teachers belong all four major sects of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, but I've also spent over a year (on and off) living in a Chinese Mahayana monastery in Taiwan, as a volunteer.

Last of all, regarding your question here:

> And is it possible to be still ordodox and live middle way? I am not telling that i am Zealous i am just more like agnostic but well, but when is hard or thinking about life i found that i ask myself am i wrong?

I'd like to quote the Dalai Lama's perspective on this, since he's a widely respected figure amongst the Christian community as well (he's actually been invited by a couple of Christian communities in the past to share his perspectives on the Bible, believe it or not). Basically, his view is that no matter what religious tradition one chooses to follow, the most important thing is to keep a spirit of inquiry and skepticism as opposed to blind faith, because ultimately blind faith can be pretty dangerous on the path in search of truth, whereas healthy skepticism & inquiry allows for a more natural / gradual realization of knowledge & truth. If you've been raised / grew up as an Orthodox Christian, the Dalai Lama suggests keeping that as your main spiritual belief system unless you reach a compelling point where there's no reason for you to feel like you want to continue with that tradition; but of course, you're always welcome to use Buddhist concepts / teachings (e.g. meditation, visualizations, etc) to supplement your practice of Christianity, as long as they don't interfere with the core concepts of your current belief. If you're interested in reading more about using Buddhist techniques to complement Christian practice, I recommend the following book by Thich Naht Hanh, a Vietnamese Mahayana monk of the Zen tradition who's also highly respected amongst Christians (I had a high school Christian teacher who started doing some mindfulness meditation after reading some of Thich Naht Hanh's books):

https://www.amazon.com/Living-Buddha-Christ-20th-Anniversary/dp/159448239X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1495546375&sr=8-3&keywords=thich+nhat+hanh+christian

To be honest -- and I promise that I'm making this as not-a-copout as I can -- my feeling is that if you're even taking the position that the entirety of the Bible is authentic and accurate, there's such a gulf of understanding between us that trying to bridge it would be well outside of the scope of a few posts.

I'll try to summarize as best I can, here.

Old Testament: The Torah was not given to Moses by God. Large portions of "God's laws" existed in other cultures before even the Jews claim that they were given to Moses. Like, word-for-word, verse for verse, verbatim. Sometimes with minor changes. The Law is clearly not entirely divine in origin, if any of it is (personally, I think I see the hand of God in places in Deuteronomy, but I'm not sure). Similarly, a great deal of the OT is founded upon pre-existing myths from other cultures in Mesopotamia. We're able to discern several different agents at work in the text, including people who clearly have very different conceptions of God, writing at different times, as well as any number of redactors. In some cases, it's pretty clear that the final version of the text was based upon a later writer completely failing to understand the original writer. In some cases, multiple incompatible versions of stories were combined into the text serially by redactors who clearly had no idea that the text was supposed to be "perfect". Check out the stories about how David met Saul, for example. Also, a lot of the traditional interpretations of things came about when the Jews noted the many flaws, inconsistencies, and absurdities in the Torah, and invented all sorts of amazing (and often ridiculous) explanations for them.

For more on this, I cannot recommend highly enough James Kugel's How to Read the Bible. It's written by a very intellectually honest orthodox Jew, which is very valuable to me because it's as unbiased as possible while still being sympathetic and open to the theist view. No joke, I will buy this for you in a heartbeat if you send me an address. It will radically transform and improve your understanding of these things.

As to the Gospels, you ought to be able to find any number of websites describing its inaccuracies and contradictions. Of course, there's a strain of fundamentalism that insists, through astounding intellectual dishonesty, that there are no contradictions. To assert this, one must use a definition of "contradiction" that would be prima facie absurd in any other context. The differing accounts of Jesus' birth, the date of the Last Supper, and so, so much more. Also, many of the accounts of Jesus' life are clearly, shall we say, modified to make the points that the authors cared about, such as Jesus's genealogy falling into nice round numbers that it actually didn't. Also, a lot of details seem to have been invented after the fact to give the impression that Jesus fulfilled prophecies that he likely didn't (As a Christian this doesn't bother me; I don't see the OT as inerrant, so it's not surprising to me that many of its prophecies were wrong). For example, the narrative wherein the family has to travel for a census (never happened) so that Jesus could be in the city that prophecy said the Messiah would be born in (he probably wasn't).

For more on this subject... I like Marcus Borg. Actually, this book by him and N.T. Wright does a great job examining such matters from multiple perspectives, as it's written in a format where they disagree with each other and give their own takes on things. Borg represents (IMO) rational but honest scholarship taken too far, whereas Wright represents a more traditional but still informed perspective. This book covers many important topics, such as many of the miracles, the nativity, the resurrection, and so on. If you want to be able to defend yourself against atheist attacks, buy this book if only for Wright's sections. But read Borg's, too. They'll open your eyes to so much.

Okay, now let's talk epistles. The wikipedia article on the subject of the Pauline Epistles is a great jumping-off point. For a more in-depth treatment, I really liked Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted though it definitely deals a lot with the gospels as well.

I'd like to make two more points in closing. The first is that there's just no reason at all to think that the Bible is accurate and authentic in its entirety. None. It doesn't even claim to be. It can't. It wasn't fully compiled until hundreds of years after its constituent parts were written, therefore it logically cannot be self-referential. When (not) Paul wrote that all scripture is God-breathed, he couldn't have been including the books that hadn't been written yet. Also, as you'll see if you read Kugel's book, much of scripture is clearly not inspired. Some would argue that it's still the book that God wanted us to end up with, but that raises the question of why there are so many different versions. Some bibles have books that others don't. Some translate things in contradictory ways to others. There is just no way to suggest that there's some kind of special force watching out for this book; we'd first have to posit that there's a single "right" version and then ask how we know which that is.

Secondly, consider so many of the things in the Bible that are, to put it mildly, inconvenient. Are iron chariots God's Achilles heel (Judges 1:19)? Why didn't any contemporary writers (including the other gospel authors) say anything about the zombie horde that broke loose in Jerusalem (Matthew 27:52-53)? Oh, and let me tell you a story:

God made the world and he saw that it was good. Except, it wasn't. So he decides that he's going to kill everyone except for one good guy and his family. So two (or seven) of every kind of animal gets crammed into -- well, we'll skip this part, you know it. But anyway, afterward, God realizes that he's made a huuuuuuge mistake and promises not to do it again.

And that is where rainbows come from.

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.

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 :)

I actually deconverted from Catholicism in college. I'm a revert.

I never got into into the party culture. I'm really against drinking and doing drugs, and I've always been skeptical of sex outside of a committed relationship and those morals stuck with me even after I deconverted from Christianity. What I did encounter was a lot of intellectual arguments against religion that I couldn't answer. However, what I also eventually discovered was that most of those objections had been heard before and responded to, at least in some manner.

So, here's my semi-comprehensive list of apologetics apologetics resources that I've accumulated over the years.

IMHO, the following books cover all the essentials very well and are probably must reads. You can buy used or online copies of them relatively cheaply, under 20 dollars if you're in the US. Check out Trent Horn's Answering Atheism, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civ, Mere Christianity by CS Lewis (you can probably get Mere Christianity at your at public library), and What is Marriage? Man and Woman a Defense for defending the concept of natural marriage. You should also read How to Argue which is a free pdf. I haven't researched abortion apologetics as extensively as other areas but I know Trent Horn has some books on those.

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I'm not going to say you should read all of my remaining recommendations but I'm putting the rest out there for you so you know they exist.

Now, no list of apologtics is going to cover every argument about Christianity so I would also recommend some online resources. www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism is an amazing forum. It has tons of Catholics who are way more knowledgable and experienced that me who can answer questions and stuff. You may or may not have heard of it ;). I also recommend William Lane Craig's site: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/question-answer. Again, Craig is a protestant so don't look to him for a defense of Catholicism. However, he's good when it comes to defending the basics of Christianity from atheism. Catholic Answers is good. Fr Barron is good. Strange Notions can be good, I link to it in my last paragraph.

The exact relationship between faith and reason was my biggest stumbling block on the road back to Catholicism, so I have some good recommendations on that topic. I recommend the papal encycle Fides et Ratio and How the Catholic Church Built Western Civ. Plantinga's book Where the Conflict Really Lies is also popular and uses evolution to make an interesting argument against materialism. Plantinga's not a Catholic so I don't know how well they would square with Catholic philosophies like Thomism, but, yeah, he exists. He also wrote this giant essay on faith and science, which was helpful. The book God and the Philosophers is pretty good too, it's an anthology of different Christian philosophers and talks about how they converted to Christianity.

Some comprehensive (but expensive) books by non-Catholics include The Blackwell Companion to natural theology by William Lane Craig (not a Catholic). I've heard good things about Richard Swinburne's apologetics trilogy The Coherence of Theism, The Existence of God, and Faith and Reason. Swinburne is Eastern Orthodox, just for the record.

I want to give a special shoutout to Edward Fesser. He's a secular atheist philosopher who converted to Catholicism. You can read his conversion story here. He also has a blog that you can google. Fesser also wrote a bunch of books that are highly recommended by people on this sub, although I haven't read them.

So I'm going to be honest and straightforward with you because I think you can handle it and you sound exactly like me.
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Ever since I saw my first video online I was instantly drawn to pornography. I realized quickly though that what I found interesting in my porn was not the same that most of my friends enjoyed. I came to the realization that many of my friends used porn as a pure sexual release and for them they didn't mind the fake and overproduced videos. The women on screen were merely a collection of body parts.

However, when I looked for porn I invariably enjoyed the types that at least attempted to portray that they were enjoying it. That it wasn't some bang fest but that it was two people that genuinely wanted to be filming together. However, even this started to feel lackluster and I didn't enjoy it. Through out this time though, these videos failed to capture my attention for more than a couple minutes at a time.

However, I found that when I got the chance I loved sitting and watching cam girls. These girls that are fully clothed and just talk and do normal things like play online games and chat the users in their forums. I found this enchanting. I began to realize I didn't like porn because it met a sexual need but I enjoyed porn because it met an emotional need.

The reason I liked cam girls and things that had a more intimate feeling was because it felt like they were really my girlfriend. It felt like they trusted me and wanted me to experience life with them. It was a way for me to feel like I wasn't alone.

This is just a dangerous of a decision as watching porn (if not more) because you are emotionally crippling yourself to be involved with a woman that does actually love you and does actually want to share intimately with you. You are hurting your future wife and future marriage.

Moving forward.

>Many of the motivations for quitting pornography don't even come close to applying to me. I can't count the number of posts I've read on /r/NoFap, and sometimes here, telling us we shouldn't watch P because it's an inaccurate representation of sexual relations, because of the horrible conditions the actresses operate under, because...

>I don't care. I didn't watch that stuff. Chalk it up to very specific tastes, if you like, but that had nothing to do with the crap that I viewed.

Newsflash! You have wrongly convinced yourself of this and have been lying to yourself for a long time. These are excuses to disregard bad behavior. I convinced myself of this too. There is not financial slavery or physical slavery happening here but that is far from something being enslaving. You and I are still taking advantage of these women! Don't delude yourself. You are stealing something from them that you have no right to. You don't get to chalk it up to being voluntary. These are human women who are hurting. (All people are wounded and are hurting. Some more than others.) They have a burning desire for validation as beautiful women just as you have a burning desire for validation as man. They are turning to the internet to provide them with some sort of happiness but the truth is those comment sections will ultimately only hurt them more than help them. They are as emotionally dependent of fleeting words of affirmation as you are on their false validation of your masculinity.
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The problem I see in your rationale is that you have decided that since your sin doesn't stink as bad as the next guy that you're for some reason ok. I believed this for a long time. The fact is sin is sin. Even if that girl was as emotionally stable as could be, you are still damaging yourself, damaging your wife, and damaging your relationship with God. You are turning to that girl to prove that you are a man. You are taking to her a wound that only God can heal. All she is going to do is scratch at it and keep it festering. It will grow worse and worse until you can no longer tell where the wound starts and you start.

WE MUST TURN TO GOD FOR OUR VALIDATION!

Only can Christ's act of Grace on the cross ever heal our wound. No matter how much money we have, how big our house is, or how many wives we have it will all fall short in trying to fulfill our sense of validation. Ecclesiastes 1:2 pretty much sums it up perfect. "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." That is pretty much the truth. Anything you find on this earth will never compare to the true love and validation you will find in the Lord.
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Read below if nothing else.

My advice to you is to first truly dwell on your own wound as a man. A great book to read is Wild at Heart which discusses what a man's heart truly longs for. That is what you are describing here. You aren't longing for sex you're longing for validation. Figure out what it means to be a godly man! Read about Paul's life, read about Moses, read about David or Solomon. There are some incredible men in the Bible. None of them get it right all the time. Most of them screw up in huge ways but the life changing point is that these men do not turn to the world for their validation, they turn to God. When you finally find your masculinity through the Lord then an amazing woman will come your way, who knows she may be hiding right under your nose.

Prayers, lean on the Lord!

I have a couple of things to say. Nothing philosophical, really—you've looked at the philosophical disputes already, and ultimately I think what you need to make up your mind is time, contemplation, and journeying. Don't think this is something that you need to determine instantly; if there is a God (as, I think, the best evidence indicates there is), then he must be compassionate and certainly is not displeased by someone who deliberately takes the time to figure things out and pursue truth with an open heart.

You're 17. Do you have any plans to go to college? If so, do the institutions you're looking at offer any philosophy of religion courses? Self-study is great, but sometimes coming at an issue in an explicitly academic context helps people really determine and refine what they think.

I, for one, cannot imagine the God in whom I believe sending such a sincere seeker of the truth to hell. Christians believe that God is love, that love is God's very essence (and indeed, if they are correct, the philosophical arguments over at /r/ThroughAGlassDarkly should establish that one of God's characteristics is being all-loving). If you have the time, I'd recommend picking up the book The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, a marvelous exposition into contemporary Christian thought regarding heaven and hell. In short, heaven is the condition of living in love, and hell is the condition of living without love—those who live in love presently on earth are already in an 'anticipated heaven,' as it were, while those who have surrendered to their own selfishness have already descended into a hell of their own making, a prison of their own subjectivity. I can't say for sure, obviously, but from this and other posts you don't strike me as someone whose concern for the satiation of subjective urges outweighs the longing for objective truth.

God is just, loving, and merciful. If you love others and act according to your conscience, I don't think you have reason to fear. Yet by no means cease from exploring. Read widely. If you're at all interested in Christianity I would recommend picking up C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, any popular-level work by N. T. Wright, and perhaps Ratzinger's God and the World or any papal encyclical issued since 2005. If for now you're just trying to wrap your head around the question of whether God exists, I would suggest that you continue to study independently, and plunge headfirst into life, being open to ideas, to people, to new experiences. The reality of God is apprehended not just in philosophical argumentation but also experientially; if in your journeying it becomes evident to you that there is something more, something greater than the hum-drum of everyday life or the experience of material satisfaction and transient happiness, then perhaps you will understand that God is out there, and that he loves you.

The freedom to be good is the true nature of the kind of freedom God intended for us, the freedom to be good, and to love as we are loved. It does not have to involve a duality of good and evil.

C.S. Lewis is pretty good, but his theology pales in comparison to Deitrich Bonheoffer's "The Cost of Discipleship".

We ought to consider the nature of the fall (and the provision for it's resolution in time and history), as trying to be like God (when that was already our true state of being to begin with ie: made in God's image and walking hand in hand with God in paradise), and eating of the tree of the duality of the knowledge of good and evil or standing as if in judgement of it. This threw us out of paradise and out of childlike obedience to the goodness of God.

Now what is the cross of Jesus Christ if it is not also the Tree of Life, as the resolution to the age old problem of evil?

This doesn't make us perfect or free from sin, but it invites us to become ever more involved in a childlike obedience to the law of life and love, and that's true life as we were meant and created to live it. There's no trying to be good in order not to be bad, in it.

There is no evil in Christ or any necessity or justification for it.

Freedom then has nothing to do with choosing between good and evil. That's a lie.

There's a paradox here involving free will, in so far as we are meant to be under the control of the Spirit which is radically free, but for which there is no inclination towards sin or evil.

LOSS of freedom occurs when we buy into the lie that freedom is a choice between good and evil. That's the tempter's first and last lie, that and the idea of trying to be God (as judge of good and evil), or to try to edge God out of the equation when we were created, by God, to be in relationship with God who is forever transcedent, although innerent.

I think it's poor theology on Lewis' part to see it like this, which retains the duality.

The weeds that were sown in the field will eventually be bundled up and throw away or burned up. To reach that point is the work and Word of the Church as the Body of Christ and the Tabernacle of God. We must get the world out of the Church and move the Church into the world until the lie has nowhere left to hide. This is the new Creation, one person at a time, which carries with it the capacity to redeem the whole of the Creation due to man's place in it as observer and participant made in God's own image. It's God's plan and purpose to redeem the world from the fall, which Jesus as the new Adam and first born from the dead was God-sent, to bring about.

I suppose then that movies will need a new plot-line when we get to that place, eventually, although they could show the myriad ways looking back in hindsight that the end, and the new beginning that saved the world, was brought about. Most of them would therefore be tragic comedies as we cry and laugh at who we once were or took ourselves to be. Then, when there is no more suffering, and no more starvation, and no more sickness, and no more unnecessary tears, and NO MORE WAR, and we've realized heaven on Earth by the work and word of Jesus Christ ("thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven"), we'll take to the stars, or the stars will come to us like a Bridegroom prepared for Earth as the Bride (who knows, anything's possible).

Sounds crazy i realize, but this is the work and purpose of the Church in the world because Jesus came, not to condemn the world, but so that, through Him, the world might be saved (and preserved for all generations from age to age).

"God has no wish for any other means of perfecting his creation than by our help. He will not reveal his Kingdom until we have laid its foundations" ~ Martin Buber

thoughts on a participatory eschatology: http://realitysandwich.com/167830/ecodoom_redemption_mad_movement/

P.S. Of course it is by God's Sovereign Grace that all the work is done, if we'll allow it.. It's a partnership. It's the way God made it to be, for the sake of love and freedom, and maybe even fun and enjoyment.. "so do not fear little ones, nor let your hearts be troubled, for it pleased our Father to share His kingdom with all His children." (maybe paraphrased slightly, sorry)

Will the evil continue to do evil and will we still need police and a legal system? of course. Even the happy ending of Revelation says as much, that after the judgement passes over the earth, the good will continue to do good and the evil, evil, but the world will never be the same once God receives His Bride and and comes to co-habitate with her, in perpetuity.

As a Catholic, I can assure you Catholics ARE Christians. Mel Gibson is a Catholic... sort of. He's a Sedevacantist.

Man, call yourself a Christian! I would also recommend looking into the Roman Catholic faith or the Eastern Orthdox faith (we're the OG Christians, lol).

Yes, get a Bible, but DON'T read it cover-to-cover. Once you get to Leviticus, you'll be like, "What the actual f--- is going ON here?" Start with the New Testament, specifically one of the Gospels. I personally love the Gospel of Luke because of how it portrays Mary, but the Gospel of John is quite good, too. It's very symbolic and is perhaps the one you could study the deepest.

if you're finding it hard to understand some of the New Testament of the Bible (the part with Jesus, the letters of Paul, and the Book of Revelation,) I would recommend buying the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible. It's an actual, readable Bible that contains commentary throughout. The version I linked is only for the New Testament. The Old Testament analysis is still being compiled, but it's almost done.

Also, listen to Scott Hahn's podcast where he breaks down various sections of the Bible.

As for reading materials outside the Bible, I can highly recommend Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis, Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton, and Chesterton's other work The Everlasting Man.

Oh yeah, PRAY! Just have a conversation with God! Talk to him about anything you want! Pray to God, ask the Blessed Mother for intercession, or any of the saints

If you're confused about the various denominations of Christianity, Here's a basic flow chart.

Here's the Nicene Creed, which is a mash-up of what (most) Christians believe

Also, I highly recommend the Podcast Pints with Aquians! It's an analysis of the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, who's life mission was to combine faith with human reason and prove that it was not unreasonable to believe in God, but perhaps it is unreasonable to not believe in God.

I, along with everyone on this sub, will be praying for you! Good luck on your faith journey!

>I don't need to. The assertions is that a physical thing can't create another physical thing. That is demonstrably untrue. You're placing restricting characteristics, not me.

It's not that a physical thing can't create another physical thing (even though it would actually be a physical thing creating a physical thing out of nothing), it's that the werewolf, a physical thing, would have nowhere to be while creating the universe, and no time to do it in.

>If a wearwolf doesn't exist, it can be whatever definition I'd like. Just like your god.

No this is idiotic. The word werewolf has a definition. You can't just change the definition however you'd like. If you can, then the conversation is meaningless because you'll just change it to be exactly like god, and then we're not talking about werewolves anymore.

> I would need to know why you think anything is likely in order to demonstrate why my wearwolf is likely. You would have to present your argument for why god is likely to have created the universe. I can then replace god with anything, and the argument will probably not change, if it's any of the popular ones. To be clear. Any argument I present would be a straw man of whatever you actually believe God is. I don't know how else to explain this.

Wrong. What I have to do is show why a werewolf is less likely to have created the universe than god, and I have. You don't seem to have anything to say in response.

>It is informed. Not sure that infants have developed morals, but I'm sure you have a well thought out argument on why slavery and genocide are cool.

I never said slavery and genocide are cool, I said you have an infantile understanding of religion.

>They're equally likely within the context of an argument for the likelihood of any being creating a universe. I personally don't think the likelihood of either is even measurable. If you say god is likely, because of reasons. I could replace god with a wearwolf, and the reasons wouldn't need to change.

Yeah you keep saying this and it's not true. You get that you're supposed to be making an argument, right? All you're doing is repeating that they're same over and over, and not explaining how. Prove to me that they're the same likelihood. Why are you saying anything else? All you should be doing is proving that, or taking back what you said.

>If a being needs to be capable of creating a universe to create a universe, then that is the only characteristic necessary for creating a universe. Adding additional requirements only makes it harder to prove. My wearwolf can be both a wearwolf and have the ability to create a universe. That ability wouldn't make it less of a wearwolf. It could possibly be more likely, because the characteristics of a wearwolf can be found in nature. Whereas the common characteristics given to a god are found NOWHERE. So what seems like a bigger stretch? But again, if you assert that additional characteristics are required to be capable of creating a universe, the onus is on you to argue that assertion.

The fact that there were men and wolves in nature absolutely does not make it more likely that a werewolf created the universe, because NOTHING about men or wolves would indicate that they can create universes. In fact, we know so much about them that it makes it way less likely. God, being defined as an all-powerful metaphysical being is much more likely to have created the universe, because nothing about the nature of god, as is traditionally defined, prevents it from doing so.

>A omniscient god would know. Otherwise, we could start with any that is measurable and predictable, and work our way towards a reasonable conclusion.

An omniscient god would know what?

>I don't have an argument to present unless you give me your reason for believing a universe creating being is likely at all. Then we can discuss why a wearwolf is as equally as likely as a that being. I have no idea why you think what you think, and I'm not going to guess from a wiki page.

You're very confused. I'm not proving to you that god exists, I'm proving to you that it's more likely that god created the universe than a werewolf. The fact that there is a long line of argumentation for god is itself evidence, because there is no corresponding argumentation for a werewolf creating the universe. If you have some, feel free to present it. Since you flippantly dismissed the fact that I gave you a wikipedia page to introduce you to apologetics, here are some books:

https://www.amazon.com/Mere-Christianity-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652926/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1509549912&sr=1-1&keywords=mere+christianity

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Superstition-Refutation-New-Atheism/dp/1587314525/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=V2XKAWX4HD8JGV0KGHDZ

https://www.amazon.com/Aquinas-Beginners-Guide-Edward-Feser/dp/1851686908/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=V2XKAWX4HD8JGV0KGHDZ

https://www.amazon.com/Five-Proofs-Existence-Edward-Feser/dp/1621641333

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.
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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.

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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.

Awesome, it's great you're so proud of her!

Haha knowledge that leads to everlasting boredom! Book studies were the worst, I always felt super obligated to study extra hard because there were so few people that often nobody would answer!

Don't be so sure that your family will keep abandoning you, it's possible sure, but there's always hope! Often they're surprised that you can leave the witnesses and live a normal, or even better than normal life (of course there's always the "blessed by satan" get out clause) but they do expect people who leave to get aids and die from a heroin overdose.

It's easy to prove them wrong! Either way though, you have your own family to look out for and you can learn what not to do!

On to the suggested reading. I've mentioned many on here before but I don't expect everyone to be aware of it all so here goes:

Reading (I have a kindle and love reading, but they're all available for ebook and in paperback)

• Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time and The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths these books really really helped me comprehend how I allowed myself to be fooled and that I can learn from my mistakes
  
• Richard Dawkins - The greatest show on earth and Coyne's Why evolution is true concreted the fact that the earth wasn't made and that animals didn't magically appear
  
• Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World - it is a bit similar to shermers books, but a great read nonetheless, Sagan has an amazing awe at the universe and it's beautiful to read!
  
• Christopher Hitchens - God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything This book is by far among my favorites but it has a more aggressive tone, which is why I wouldn't start with it. Hitchens was awesome, even though I didn't agree with everything he said.
  
  Web
  
  
• JWFacts, of course...an invaluable site but it WILL make you mad
  
• Bad astronomy - add it to your RSS reader, often breathtaking, and generally about space
  
• Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True blog - science and politics
  
  
  Pocasts
  
  (all on iTunes etc, i like them because I can listen at work or download to my phone)
  
  
• The skeptic's guide to the universe it's intelligent, they discuss science and science news and skepticism and I always learn something
  
• Dogma debate just great, lots of debates with christians of various kinds and you can hear how both sides present their arguments
  
• Rationally speaking you said philosophy is of interest, if so this is a must!!!
  
• Cognitive dissonance - they are angry they talk news and politics and religion, it's very funny, informative and irreverent
  
• Caustic soda just a generally awesome science / history / factual podcast
  
  
  That's about it for now, if you soak all that in / want more / have suggestions let me know, and I'd love to hear what you think! :)
  
  

Things you can do at home: I'd recommend getting a prayer book (I started with this one: https://www.amazon.com/Pocket-Prayer-Orthodox-Christians-paper/dp/B000FFYC72/) and start reading the morning, afternoon, and evening prayers. They won't take long and, practiced consistently, they will begin to incline your heart towards God. They did mine.

Regarding the Jesus Prayer: God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love and of a sound mind. You need not be afraid of invoking the name of Jesus "wrongly" as long as you are doing it out of love and a sound mind. Say it reverently and with great love.

"Beginning to Pray" by Met. Anthony Bloom is a wonderful read if you are trying to understand prayer better: https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Pray-Anthony-Bloom/dp/0809115093/ It has the added virtue of being short.

And to echo what others have said, find a way that you can stand in the Church and apprehend this with more than just your noggin'. Seriously. Even if that means you can only get out once or twice a month. That's where my family is at right now, at least through the end of the year. Orthodoxy is such a wonderful thing to experience, but it's also so rich that for inquirers like you and me, even once or twice a month may be enough beauty to feed on until our situations improve.

1. God loves you unconditionally and gives more grace than we could ever deserve.
   
2. You aren't alone. I felt this exact way when I found out I was attracted to guys when I first started college.
   
3. Don't give into pressure to choose one side or the other right away or even soon. This is a process of learning and growth and it probably sucks right now, but lean into the tension. Coming out / being 100% confident of your sexuality really soon is something that is, in my opinion, overhyped. Take your time.
   
4. I don't know how much research you have done yet, but I would recuse yourself from your currently held position and take a stance of neutrality. It's important as a Christian to figure out why you believe what you believe. This can be hard to do, but see what the Side A (Affirming) crowd's arguments and experiences are. Take notes. Understand why they genuinely believe that they are not acting against God. See how and why they counter their opponents' arguments. Once you have fully done that (and by fully I mean take your time and do it for a few months), then look up the non-affirming (Side B, Y, and X) positions and do the same. Even if this doesn't help you come to a conclusion right away, this still is a healthy practice of understanding the why behind the what.
   
5. This process of testing the foundations of your beliefs is/should probably extend to issues beyond LGBT inclusion in the church. One main pillar behind any LGBT/church argument is a stance on if Scripture is inerrant or not / what does it mean for something to be "inspired by God" / Should we hold to the same values as people 2,000 years ago (we've already expanded / moved on some from that)?
   
6. Remember to take breaks from this. Be diligent, but don't let this pursuit of the truth consume you.
   
7. Find non-judgmental friends who won't try to preach at you and can support you in your time of discernment and beyond.
   
   If you would like to PM me and ask more questions, I'm always happy to help people who were where I was 4 years ago.
   
   ​
   
   Here are a few good Affirming (A) resources to start out with:
   
   Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-VS-Christians Debate by Justin Lee (A)
   
   God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships by Matthew Vines (A)
   
   Modern Kinship by David and Constantino Khalaf (A)
   
   Blue Babies Pink by Brett Trapp / B.T. Harmann (A)
   
   Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church's Debate on Same-Sex Relationships by James Brownson (A)
   
   Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation by Dale Martin (A)
   
   Risking Grace, Loving Our Gay Family and Friends Like Jesus by Dave Jackson (A)
   
   ​
   
   I'm compiling a list of other good resources / bad ones (from all perspectives, not just ones I disagree with), so let me know if you're looking for something more specific.

I think I first have to shatter a paradigm in your thinking.

Christianity isn't about getting into Heaven. Yes, a lot of churches in the West sell it as a "get out of Hell free" card. Yes, Jesus is "sold" to a lot of people that way. But that's not what the Bible really says, at least, not fully. It's a partial picture, at best, and a misguided one at worst.

Christianity, is first and foremost about God's work to lovingly restore mankind and creation to full life. Relationships are about distance, and it's about God closing that gap between us and Him.

What do I mean by, full life? The idea starts with us realizing that there is something deeply wrong and broken in the world, and in each of us, as individuals. We come from broken homes, warring countries, feuding families, a world of scarcity, pain, and death. We all feel inadequate in some way; there are these fault lines in our souls that we attempt to spackle over with things like relationships, hobbies, aspirations, occupations, other people's approval, etc.

We are literally slaves to death, in this paradigm. We strategize how to spend our remaining time, maximizing our comfort and happiness, and if we can, helping those we like along the way (often because they provide us with a kind of identification that makes us feel less precarious).

Christ (and the Law) were given to us to break us out from under that slavery.

The Bible tells us the Law came first to make us aware that we were even under slavery in the first place. Oftentimes, we're so broken, we actually prefer being in slavery. We can't see, hear, touch, taste, feel our enslavement - or if we can, we're so accustomed to it that we stick with it. Addicts are an extreme example of this, but there are manifestations of this in all our lives.

The Exodus story provides an early example of this. The Bible tells us it took the Israelites 40 years as they were guided by God to get from Egypt to Israel. Well, look on a map; they're not that far away. What took them so long? Was God, who was guiding them, lost?

The Rabbinic scholars basically sum it up thusly: God could take the Israelites out of Egypt in a heartbeat, but He also needed to take Egypt out of the Israelites.

When you're a slave for 400 years, you get accustomed to it. You move like a slave, you think like a slave, you sleep like a slave, you generally act like a slave. Your parents were slaves, and you will be too, so you don't even expect right from life any more.

But imagine, then God suddenly comes in and tells you, no, you're my child (aka, divine royalty) - and, all of the sudden, these former slaves are supposed to know how to act like royalty?

God made them stop many places along the way; taught them what victory looked and felt like, taught them to be conformed to His ways (literally, to begin moving like the King), and provided food, water, and everything they needed along the way during those 40 years of reconditioning.

(As a sidenote, I often hear critics of the Law approach the Law as a negative thing on the face of it. I want to challenge them to approach it as a good thing designed to give wisdom and life. Often times the amount of laws (613) is listed as this staggering amount that no man could keep. Well, yeah, God knows that. That's why no human being is supposed to keep all the Law. Certain Laws are only for men, or only for women, or only for priests, or only for subsets of priests, or only for certain occasions; etc. When someone lists the amount of Laws as their chief objections, I immediately say in my head, "Okay, this person doesn't know much about Torah law." But this may be neither here nor there in terms of chief objections).

So then, we have the Law and that that "Old Testament" stuff, and then Christ enters the picture and says things like:

>You have heard that it was said, Do not commit adultery. But I tell you, everyone who looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

What was Jesus getting at with things like this? He was pointing to a deeper reality that the Law can't serve as something that will bind up your cracks and make you presentable to God (much in the same way we use relationships, hobbies, aspirations, occupations, etc.) The people who were following the Law that way had missed the point! The Law highlights our absolute need for restoration (and a restorer!) by showing us exactly how we are broken.

This is where the Resurrection comes into play, because the ultimate reality of Jesus' work isn't to funnel souls into Heaven, but to prepare them for their own resurrection. There will be a day when God will restore the Earth (namely, by bringing the Kingdom of Heaven down to it), establishing his rule, and bringing it back to the Paradisical, Edenic state.

I mean, this might be a big concept to wrap your mind around now, but if you want to see the Biblical basis for this, check out N.T. Wright's Suprised by Hope. Jews always believed in the Resurrection and the world to come (aka, Tikkun Olam). The Orthodox Church has always preached the doctrine of the Resurrection. And it's in all the creeds. (Yes, Western Christianity has misunderstood and misrepresented it for ages).

So in a sense, you're kind of right about morality. Jesus isn't so concerned about morality as much as he is about relational distance. God wants to be close to you, to see your wounds, heal and restore them, and then use you to help restore others and all of creation (sidenote: this is why the Orthodox are particularly "green"). That's the fundamental nature of Grace, and truly, we are under Grace.

I mean, Paul practically wrote Romans 6 in response to your blog:

Seriously. Take a moment. Read the chapter. It answers just about every objection you raised, though I think in a way you wouldn't expect (because you set it up as a dichotomy, and really, there's a third way).

C.S. Lewis once said:

>We are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. “How he’s grown!” we exclaim, “How time flies!” as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed; unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.

Deep inside, even if we had the best life we could imagine for ourselves, we'd still know that something is seriously wrong in the world. This is because God didn't design us for sin and death, yet we experience it's effects on a daily basis.

In the end of the chapter, Paul talks about us being slaves to either sin, or slaves to righteousness. Being a slave to sin leads to death, because the wages of sin are death. Being a slave to righteousness leads to life, because it is close to God, the author of life.

Christianity isn't about "being good." It's not about getting all your holy ducks in a row and hoping it'll appease an angry God who wants to burn you forever and ever and ever.

It's all about relational proximity. God is drawing close to us, particularly through the advent, death, and resurrection of Christ, and yes, thank God He's more interested in restoring everything than he is in destroying it.

Hi there! Also a former raised-Catholic-but-not-really-former-atheist/agnostic revert here.

There are numerous - almost endless - amount of resources out there, regarding the Church. (Considering the age of the Catholic Church, it's not surprising.) If you had more specific topics you were looking for, I'm sure people here would be more than willing to point you in the right direction.

For more general sources by platform:

 

BOOKS

• There actually is a "Catholicism for Dummies".
  
  
• Mere Christianity is a classic read for all Christians. It is not explicitly Catholic, but it gives a good foundation.
  
   
  
  YOUTUBE
  
  
• Father Mike Schmitz does a great job of explaining things concisely and with enthusiasm.
  
  
• Bishop Robert Barron is also extremely popular on social media among Catholics. Great content.
  
   
  
  PODCASTS
  
  
• Catholic Stuff You Should Know is one part goofy banter and one part reflections/discussions on Catholicism. I listened to them regularly when I had 1+ hour commutes each way :)
  
  
• Catholic Answers is also a well-known podcast among Catholics. Haven't listened to them yet, but I always hear good things!
  
   
  
  MISC
  
  
• Regarding mass and its structure/meaning. Here is a link to a USCCB page that breaks down the mass structure and explains the significance of each section/prayer
  
  
• On how to pray the rosary. Learning the rosary can be a big hurdle for neophytes, but it would still be fruitful to begin with perhaps just one decade.
  
   
  
  
  This subreddit is generally good at giving solid answers and advice, if you had specific questions/doubts/inquiries. It was actually probably quite an instrumental player in my reversion to the Church. And like you said, head to confession ASAP! Welcome back home, friend.

Kudos to you for wanting to diversify your reading list. Reading or listening to only one person is always a dangerous thing, no matter who that might be. I've made a bunch of book recommendations on this sub in the past. Here are a few I think are a good fit for you specifically. In general, I'd also highly recommend all of the works by the authors listed.

• Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition by Jamie Smith. This is always my top recommendation for the young person looking for more depth. It's a quick easy read best digested in small parts. It does a great job of providing an overview of the Reformed tradition that is accessible, theological, and pastoral. It's aimed at those who have a 'come-to-Calvin' moment from within other theological traditions (Smith was Pentecostal) but would benefit everyone.
  
  
• Chosen by God and/or The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul. Sproul is simply the best at explaining complex theological concepts in an easy to understand manner. These are his two best books in my opinion, but anything he has written is worth a read.
  
  
• The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. This is a satirical work where Lewis describes temptation from the vantage point of a junior and senior demon. The discription may sound odd, but it is full of insights into the state of mankind. Given your comments about temptation, I'd call this one a must read. Lewis was a master communicator, consider Mere Christianity as well.
  
  
• Deep Down Faith by Cornelius Plantinga. This one is a devotional aimed at young adults, but an excellent explanation of Reformed Faith. Highly recommended.
  
  
• Knowing God by J.I Packer - This is a classic book that, in the words of Elizabeth Elliot, "puts the hay where the sheep can reach it--plainly shows us ordinary folks what it means to know God." I don't know that there are many books that every Christian needs to read, but this one is definitely on the list.
  
  Lastly, I'd encourage you to read through some of the Reformed Confessions. Begin with the Heidelberg Catechim and the Belgic Confession. If you want a more modern approach, I'd encourage you to also read the Christian Reformed Church's Contemporary Testimony Our World Belongs To God, too.

I went through almost the exact same thing. After leaving our main church, my wife and I stopped going all together. Several years later, after we moved because of jobs, we started going again. Needless to say, that didn't last long.

My wife and I both come from very strong Christian backgrounds; my wife's father was a Southern-Baptist minister for decades, and my dad went to Dallas Theological Seminary and taught church classes most of his life. So let's just say that leaving wasn't an easy thing.

However, my own search led me to realize the truth. Since my wife and I are very close, I talked with her about these things but was very careful about what I said. I'm still careful. I approach the discussions from the standpoint of "searching for answers" rather than declaring that I've already decided.

My mantra over the last few years has been "If it were possible to know the truth, and one of the possibilities was that God didn't exist, would you really want to know?" Well, my answer is yes. I don't want to be a blind-follower Christian. If God is real, then I want to know for sure!

I recommend approaching it like that. It let's your spouse see that you are truly searching for answers. The truth is all we really want, and we can't use a 3000 year-old book to do it. We need real answers, not mythology.

Be sure to talk about it a lot, and be open minded to your spouse's point of view. Let them know you still care for them deeply.

This sub-reddit has been so helpful and caring, so good job starting here. Also grab some books or find some web-sites that discus these things. Here are a few I recommend:

Sites

• http://new.exchristian.net/
  
  
• http://www.patheos.com/ (you'll find many opinions here. great site)
  
  
• https://richarddawkins.net/
  
  Books
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446697966/
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618918248
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Undeniable-Evolution-Creation-Bill-Nye/dp/1250074223
  
  Cheers
  ~Nate

Hi r1mmer, welcome to the community!

It looks like you have gotten some pretty good responses here but let me try to put the answers more concisely:

The Bible fitting together: There are three main issues here.

-One, the argument is fundamentally flawed because anyone can add to a common theme in a semi-coherent way as long as he read the preceding books. Even if there were no contradictions, there doesn't need to be an external omniscient guiding hand for the next guy down the road to read the previous books and write a little more without contradicting them.

-Two, the current composition of the Bible are the accepted books, chosen by church elders out of many candidates. Of course they would exclude the books that don't fit. (I believe others have linked some sources for this.)

-Three, the contradictions are there if you take a deep breath and think critically about them. A good example to start with is the crucifixion and what it meant. In the first Gospel written (Mark) a distressed and confused Jesus cries out to God about being forsaken and dies. In the last Gospel written (John) a calm and collected Jesus commends his spirit to God and dies. The stories are different and the meanings are different. I would highly recommend reading this book for all the details.

On a side note here, if someone argues that the Bible is infallible, I like to use the contradictory numbers of horse stalls for Solomon's horses. It's a number and much harder to defeat with the typical tactics like reinterpreting meanings, although they certainly try (It clearly says stall, not the number of horses lol.) Here are a bunch more numerical contradictions.

Starting year for our calender: This one is pretty easy. Starting dates for calendars all over the world throughout time are retroactively applied to an important event in that various culture at that time. Winning a great battle, forming a nation, the fictional birth date of a deity are all starting points that have been used after the fact. Just because Jesus was important to a culture 500 years after he supposedly lived doesn't mean anything spectacular actually happened at the starting date of the calendar they invent. That needs to be verified using other evidence. Here is the wiki link.

Morality is arbitrary: These are always the funniest arguments from Christians because when it comes down to it, everyone forms moral beliefs the same way regardless of specific religion or lack thereof. It comes down to cultural expectations and personal taste. The fundamental basis of morality is rooted deep in our psychology in universal, innate, evolutionarily derived psychological systems. Each of us may innately favor one more than another, like respect for authority over empathy, or even lack some of them altogether in rare cases. Our culture fills in the specifics over these systems and there you go. The question you should be asking your Christian friends is why they are attracted to the themes of love and forgiveness in their faith. If you didn't value those things to begin with, you wouldn't be drawn in. And why can there be so many different takes on morality from the same book? If you have little empathy and a lot of respect for authority, slaying the infidel is easy, but much harder to do if you have much more empathy than respect for authority. Jihad being a actual religious fight or an internal struggle are radically different interpretations derived from the same book (sorry, drifted into Islam for the example there) and the difference is in the person.

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 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

Well, I actually grew up in the Pentecostal tradition. I converted to Southern Baptist about two years ago, and made the switch to reformed theology about one year ago.

It really depends on the church with Baptists; they're highly variable. Some groups, like free-will baptists, are emphatically opposed to Calvin and the like. Others, like self-proclaimed reformed baptists, welcome and celebrate Calvin and his contemporaries' contributions to Protestantism. I've never attended a baptist church that wasn't at least implicitly Calvinist, though I only recently started attending a properly reformed Church that observed the 2nd London Baptist Confession. Hence, it's kind of difficult to give much advice, as I've always been in friendly territory.

If you just want to get a better feel for reformed theology in-general, there are a couple of routes. Depending on your reading comprehension and Biblical competence, I would recommend a few books.

Novice: Bible Doctrine, Grudem.

This is a decent, modern introduction to systematic theology in-general. Grudem is not what many would call reformed, but he leans that way. Whatever the case, it is a helpful look into the terminology that theologians have utilized over the years. Good place to get your feet wet.

Adept: Systematic Theology, Grudem

Reformed Dogmatics, Bavinck

These ones are a bit more academically oriented, so if you're not used to reading this sort of thing, they might be difficult to read. Bavinck's work is highly recommended, and is properly reformed, though it takes a greater reading comprehension than Grudem.

Advanced: Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin

Anything else earlier than the 20th Century (Jonathan Edwards, John Owen, etc.)

This is the bedrock of reformed theology, which I'm sure you're probably aware of. The only problem is that it can be very difficult to read. In some cases, much more than the content of modern academia. This is really a very very distilled list. There is literally so much good material out there, but these are some of the big names that I hear often.

As regards general advice, two things come to mind:

1. I would keep in mind the primacy of the text of Scripture itself. This might seem obvious, but one of the pitfalls of the reformation is the romance with systematic theology. Though ST is a wonderful thing, some reformed guys do it at the expense of the textual significance of the Scriptures themselves. We must always ask ourselves if we, in our exposition, are doing justice to what the Scriptures themselves are saying. Again, this seems obvious, but it is rarely borne out the praxis of our theology and exegesis.
   
   
2. Do not make Calvinism or Reformed theology the locus of your Christianity or your identity. Though reformed soteriology is seminal to our faith and practice, we must ultimately identify ourselves as the covenant people of God; those united to Christ through faith in His death and resurrection. Rest in the substance of your faith, not in its explanation.
   
   I'll be praying that you heed the Scriptures in all things, and that your life coheres with the will of God. Feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions or concerns as relates the reformation, theology, Scripture, or anything!
   
   Soli deo Gloria

Tl;dr: pastor, bible, catechism, mere Christianity and other books, the bible project, and other podcasts.

You should really consider talking to your pastor or a pastor at your church. Either go up to one and ask for a meeting, or go through the church email address or whatever contact method you have. Many protestant churches have membership or intro classes that explain these difficult,but important topics, and the Catholic church and orthodox church have formal classes. Reading the bible is Great, it is the most important thing to have besides a saving relationship with Christ. but having someone mature who can help you and lead you is immensely helpful,it's why they're there. A lot of these things are difficult to understand, and reading the bible often leads to more questions before it answers them. Find a teacher (or a few) that you trust to help explain them,then see of they line up with scripture as you grow more acquainted with it.

Catechisms are also helpful. They cover the basics in a question and answer format. There are also lots of podcasts that talk about this stuff as well. Books, videos, everything. C.S. Lewis is famous for explaining faith well, mere christianity is a great start. I have found the bible project youtube channel to be particularly helpful when reading and trying to understand the bible. It gives outlines of the books and helps frame the confusing language in an understandable way. John piper has a podcast "ask pastor john", but these are from one very specific view on Christianity called Calvinism and are very specific. Keep that one in your back pocket for now. Hope that helps supplement the answers here and give you direction. I've definitely had the confusing times where I don't know where to begin,I hope this makes that a smaller period of time for you. Pm me as well if you want additional resources.

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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)

God bless you! :) I love how you have shared your testimony.

I'm a young Christian guy and, unfortunately, struggle with porn and masturbation as well. So I do relate to your troubles there.

As someone who is new to the Christian faith, you might find this book REALLY helpful:

https://www.amazon.com/Mere-Christianity-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652926/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473987989&sr=8-1&keywords=mere+christianity

It is called "Mere Christianity" by C.S Lewis, who, fun fact, is also the auther of the "Chronicals of Narnia" fiction series.

C.S Lewis was a devout Christian and has wrote many great books on the Christian faith. I would also reccomend his book "the Screwtape Letters" which is a book about demons. And it might help you with temptation, as you shall realise the spiritual reality of what happens whan you go through that tempation.

You also mentioned that your parents are Catholic, so they might appreciate that you learn Theology from the renowned Theologian,

Thomas Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Aquinas-Selected-Writings-Classics/dp/0140436324/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1473988742&sr=1-1&keywords=thomas+aquinas

https://www.amazon.com/Aquinass-Shorter-Summa-Thomass-Theologica/dp/1928832431/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1473989822&sr=1-7&keywords=thomas+aquinas

https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Aquinas-50-Pages-Laymans/dp/0988442515/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1473989867&sr=1-3&keywords=thomism

https://www.amazon.com/Aquinas-Beginners-Guide-Edward-Feser/dp/1851686908/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1473989924&sr=1-6&keywords=thomism

Thomos Aquinas is not only one of the greatest philosophers of Christianity, but one of the greatest philosophers PERIOD.

Just by reading, you can really learn a lot about the nature of God, what it means to

pray, how to properly interpret Scripture, understanding your

sexuality, the proper use of meditation etc.

Just reading one book can inform you a LOT.

I say this because, a lot of times, new Christians ask how or where

they can learn more about Christianity. Which is funny because the

answer is right in front of them. :) You learn more about religion

just as you learn more about everything else iln life. Through books.

)

Anyways. God bless you in your newfound relationship with Him.
May you grow in faith and find righteous abstinence from sin.
Pray for me as I shall pray for you.

Deo Gratias! +++

> 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.

To become a better person takes intentionality, meaning you have to make a decision to make a change every time something new and unwholesome presents itself to you regarding yourself. The Bible is certainly a plumb line on major things to do to become a better person, but it's also full of pictures of individuals who showed the way for being amazing people.

I've found that the more I study leadership, psychology, emotional intelligence, etc., the more I see a blue print for it in the Bible, in particular, demonstrated by Christ himself.

If you want to be the best version of yourself, study servant-based leadership. Jesus was a servant leader. The apostles learned from Jesus how to be servant leaders. Servant leadership is the mortal granularity that made the gospel so transformative and helped it spread like a wildfire. If you are essentially having to "sell" a new religious belief system in the 1st century, you've got to be able to believe the salesman as well as the integrity of the product, right? The product is salvation and the sales pitch is a new way of walking in freedom and living a wholesome, abundant life. Christ's leadership model did just that.

If you want some good reads on leadership, check these out, and then read the new testament chapter by chapter and verse by verse. Keep in mind, you don't need a title or position to be a leader -- that's what servant leadership is all about.

"Spiritual Leadership" by J. Oswald Sanders: Spiritual Leadership: Principles of Excellence For Every Believer (Sanders Spiritual Growth Series) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802416705/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_u.ZhDbPEN8952

"Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis: Mere Christianity https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060652926/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Ma0hDbTCSG70T

More leadership for business and for life:

"The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" by John C. Maxwell: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You (10th Anniversary Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0785288376/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_cc0hDbRCMAGMZ

"The 5 Levels of Leadership" by John C. Maxwell: The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential https://www.amazon.com/dp/1599953633/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_6c0hDbK4RV56Y

Great for you to join us :-)

I would suggest reading sections of the Bible in an order similar to this due to usefulness and readability:

1. Gospels and Acts
   
2. Psalms and Proverbs
   
3. Genesis through to 2 Kings (although some parts of Number and Leviticus can be challenging)
   
4. Ezra to Job, Ecclesiastes to Song of Solomon
   
5. The rest of the New testament
   
6. The Prophets
   
   I think that the letters in the new testament and the prophets have so much good stuff in them, but can be a little hard to digest. With these books I would look for a commentary or some literature that helps to point to the most useful parts. Some times the really useful parts are easily missed due to being written in amongst some other parts that are harder to understand.
   
   I would also suggest you find a good church in your area - a good church is one which focusses on what is in the scriptures and teaches real world application from it.
   
   Also, if you begin to get interested in some deeper parts of theology, I would recommend that you look into the works of people like Wayne Grudem who I think is helpful due to the way he approaches issues - he considers each main view point and then states an answer with regards to how it most logically fits. His book on Systematic Theology is excellent in my opinion.
   
   Once again, welcome to you :-)

> You are making a huge assumption that the Bible is god's guide.

I am answering from within the parameters you gave me. You asked originally about JW's interpretation of Christianity. I think I am granted such assumption in the light of this fact.

> What about all those people who fervently believe the Koran or Old Testament (only) or the Upanishads or the Veda or any other holy book to be god's guide to man?

God will judge them, not me. My task is to spread His good news to them. If He deem them worthy of salvation, then they are worthy of salvation.

> Do you not pause and question what makes your holy book so special, what makes your holy book the true word of god? If other people believe in other holy books with as much you zeal as you do in yours, how can you tell your not falling into the same false belief as they are? How do you know you are following the true word of god and not some impostor?

I suggest Plantinga's book Warranted Christian Belief or C.S.Lewis' Mere Christianity.

My argument for it is fairly simple. The God worshipped by the Christians is the same God that was already being worshipped when Ur was the most important city in the world. The other gods came and went, but He remained.

> If you are truly following the word of god (bible) and Hindus aren't (in general), shouldn't you feel god more?

No, why should I?

> Shouldn't god give you some indication you are on the right path as oppose to how you would feel if you were Hindu?

O, but He does! Truth will set you free, and that is your signal.

> That is like giving your children a test and then rewarding everyone who answered the questions equally regardless if they got it right, and then punishing those who got it wrong (punishment depending on your belief on heaven/hell can simply be having it somehow worse off in the afterlife then another person).

The destiny of mankind is to stay on Earth. No one will be 'worse off' than anyone else.

> How are any of your children supposed to know what the right answers (any 'lifestyle/faith' that gets you the best possible afterlife) are if you give everyone equal encouragement throughout the learning process and test?

There is no best possible afterlife. There is a simple hope of eternal life here on Earth.

> If Hindus can/will obtain the same level of afterlife as members of your faith, then again I ask, why are you spreading your faith?

Why do you tell your friends when something good happens to you?

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.

You asked why, not for a deductive argument proving the truth of our answers.


If you have intellectual worries about God, feel free to browse the various categories of responses to questions concerning His existence.


If you have doubts about Jesus, only you can answer those for yourself. We believe that He's divine and approaches us all relationally. Read a Gospel or two (John and Mark are my favorites). Get to know the story and seriously ask yourself if this Christ person, as character, speaks to you in any way.


NT Wright is a pretty well regarded orthodox Christian scholar by both Christians and Non-Christians, so you may want to read some of his work if you have questions to address about the truth of this character. Who Was Jesus? and Simply Jesus may help you.


If you find any of that compelling and wish to dig into some Christian theology of Jesus, a couple excellent books which portray my personal take fairly well are King Jesus Gospel and Start Here.

And, of course, if you wish merely to approach the idea of Christianity in general, C.S. Lewis famously asserted many fundamentals in his classic Mere Christianity.


If you want me to assert the truth Christianity by disproving all other religions, I will not. I believe that religion is, fundamentally, a search for the divine or God. If divine truth exists, I would expect it to be echoed throughout the mythic language of all attempts to know Him (religions). Conversely, I assert the goodness and truth of Jesus Christ, who I see as central, and anything else that matters falls naturally into place.

I'm a little late to the party, but I just thought I'd add my voice.

There are a couple things I would like to say. I'm sure none of it hasn't already been said somewhere here, but I'll just repeat for emphasis.

First of all, hi! And welcome. I'm sure you are feeling so confused and overwhelmed right now. That's okay. There's a lot to take in and consider. Take your time, go at your own pace, and make sure that wherever you end up is a place that is right for you. It's important to always consider what others have to say but that doesn't mean you have to follow what they say. You make your decisions and you determine your path.

If this road you are taking brings you to atheism (or anything unacceptable to your family and/or friends) you do not have to come out before you are ready. Depending on your situation it could be very detrimental to do so before the time is right. If someone will do wrong by you if they know the truth, then you are by no means obligated to give them the truth. And when the right time is, only you can say. Others may be able to help you with it, but when it comes down to it, it is your life and your decision.

And, again, if you eventually begin to identify as an atheist it is possible, and maybe even probable that you will feel angry. Many of us have been through it, or still are going through it. Angry about things that are happening around the world today and angry about things from your upbringing. That is okay too. There are many things we should be angry about. Just don't let that anger consume you. And be sure to still be reasonable. Anger can be a good thing when placed appropriately and if it's kept in perspective. It's a hard field to navigate but you'll figure it out with time and experience.

Don't get so caught up in one worldview that you are stuck in an echo chamber, never exposed to differing thoughts and opinions. Keep an open mind and don't shut things out simply because you don't want to change your opinion or are so convinced of something that you think there's no chance you could ever be wrong. This really applies to everything in life...not just religious beliefs or lack thereof.

I wanted to address you personally, rather than discuss the beliefs because I'm sure you have been given so much to consider and read already. It is likely that everything I have to suggest has already been mentioned, but:

• There are so many good videos at The Atheist Experience
  
  
• Greta Christina's blog has many wonderful and thought provoking writings
  
  
• "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins is incredible (as is most of his work)
  
  
• Just about any Christopher Hitchens debate on YouTube is fascinating. I also loved his book "God Is Not Great" but if you aren't a reader it may be tiresome and difficult to get through.
  
  
• PZ Myers blog, Pharyngula is excellent as well.
  
  I could go on, but this post is already so much longer than I intended. So I'll just end on this note: things might look pretty frightening and overwhelming right now, but don't let it scare you off. There is no better feeling than learning and coming to your own conclusions about who you are and what you believe. Especially if you've had those things decided for you your entire life. If you ever need help or have questions, come here. There are many of us who are more than willing to do what we can to help.
  
  Good luck! :)

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.

>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

Perhaps it's time to move away from LDS specific arguments, and start questioning the God concept in general; especially as it relates to morality.

One argument I've always liked, is that even if there is a god, by far the strongest test of morality it could ask for is if a person will be moral while believing there is no such being, and no promise of reward or punishment.

If she is willing to read, I recommend the following:

• Start with The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. It's much less confrontational than the stuff from more current atheist writers, and his argument is awesome. He basically debunks religion by dismantling the new age movement, and then showing that religion is basically the same.
  
  
• After reading that I would go with "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, or "God is not Great" by Christopher Hitchens. Both are much more confrontational, and in my opinion, are not recommended unless someone is already close to on the fence. Both also deal heavily with the immorality of religion, but I think "God Is Not Great" probably puts more focus on that particular issue.
  
  YouTube is also a fantastic resource. Here are some of the video series that I found particularly convincing as I was going through my own transition:
  
  
• Why I Am No Longer a Christian
  
  
• Psychology of Belief
  
  
• Morality By QualiaSoup: 1 - Good Without Gods, 2 - Not So Good Books, 3 - Objectivity and Oughtness
  
  
• The Best Optical Illusion in the World
  
  I think it's also important to remember that there is are alternative worldviews out there which are not based on religion, which are just as rewarding and fulfilling, if not more so. Here are a few videos that have sparked that sense of wonder and that I used to associate with the spirit. Most of these are not direct attacks on religion, but rather are just inspiring ideas from a secular\scientific worldview. I recognize that these may not have universal appeal, but they spoke to me, and may do so for you and your wife as well:
  
  
• My Spirituality as an Atheist
  
  
• You are Here (Pale Blue Dot)
  
  
• The Sagan Series
  
  
• The Most Astounding Fact: Neil deGrasse Tyson
  
  
• We Stopped Dreaming: Episode 1, Episode 2
  
  
• Science Saved My Soul
  
  
• Why Didn't Anybody Tell Me?
  
  
• Instruction Manual for Life
  
  
• We Got Scared
  
  
• The Greatest Speech Ever Made
  
  

>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.

Ok, so my son went through this exact same thing. The dog water is actually what we used to introduce the firm "no means no" concept, as well as time out.

Our son was also about 12-13 months when he started playing with the dog water. Same thing- he just loves putting his foot in it! He would do the same grin at us while hovering his foot over the water.

We tried redirection at first, but it became a game, so we resorted to time out. We got what is, in my opinion, the best time out chair for toddlers. I love this chair because you can(and should) remove the toys, and you can strap him in. We put the chair in a corner and that's just where it always is. When he's in time out, we call it time out, when he's just playing, we call it his thinking chair.

So here's what you do:

Next time he touches the water, tell him "No touching the dog water! That is yucky! If you touch the dog water again you will have a time out."

When he touches it again: "uh-oh! You touched the dog water! Now you have to have a time out..." (Say this in a surprised/sympathetic tone- like "it's to bad you did that... Sucks to be you" sort of way.)

Pick him up or wake him to the chair, put him in, strap him in and say "you're having a time out for touching the dog water."

Walk away for one minute.

He may think it is fun at first, but will then scream bloody murder most likely. Ignore this. Make NO eye contact!

After one minute, walk back.

"You were in time out for touching the dog water. You may not touch the dog water, that's yucky. Please say sorry and give me a hug." (He obviously didn't say sorry at first, but he did give the best hugs.)

Now, engage him with something else, play as if nothing happened. It's really important not to hold a grudge after a time out. Don't dwell on it. If he heads back to the dog water, you can remind him "Don't touch the dog water or you will have to have another time out".

When he touches it again, because he totally will, repeat the time out. "Uh-oh! You touched the dog water, now you have to have a time out..." Etc etc.

The key is to be extremely consistent with this. If it's a new day or occasion, I will give my son a warning of "if you do that again you will get a time out" but if it's the same day, anytime after the initial second chance is an immediate time out.

My son did it about 5 times in a row the first day, then he stopped. Then next day he did it a few times, and here and there over the next few days. This is totally normal and should be expected as he is testing boundaries and seeing how consistent you will really be. My son is 18 months now and I just have to remind him that he will get a time out if he chooses to touch the dog water, and he usually chooses not to.

The most important part of this is to make it clear that it is his choice to do something that lands him in time out. It's not you deciding he gets a time out, it's just that time outs are the consequence and his actions cause it. That's why you have a sympathetic tone when putting him in time out.

This is basically a really basic intro to Love and Logic discipline. In a nutshell you make sure the consequence is logical, and that the child is in total control of the choices they make (and therefore the consequences). You also never show animosity toward a misbehaving toddler, but empathy. It works wonders on toddlers, I have used it on many kids during my career as a nanny. If you have a chance to read it, I would highly suggest [Parenting With Love And Logic] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1576839540/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_xRGIwbN38WQEH) or Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood.
I know it sounds kind of hippy-granola but I swear to you it is the best, most intuitive discipline system I have ever used.

Good luck!

Hello, I'm a bit late to this parade (I just heard Dr. Peterson's podcast with Joe Rogan yesterday) but I wanted to weigh in here.

There are a lot of good sources from a variety of Christian viewpoints. Many of the ones already listed are very good, but I don't see anything from my own particular version of Christianity (Eastern Orthodoxy), so I wanted to suggest two resource for you from that perspective as well as another from C.S. Lewis whose words are held dear by most Christians.



The first is a lecture by Fr. John Behr, the current dean of St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary. He holds Masters of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford University. This one is on YouTube and is 1.5 hours in length. It is called Death, the Final Frontier.There are a couple of minutes of fluff at the beginning but it starts to really roll into something I think Jordan Peterson fans would enjoy at the 3-minute mark. It is ostensibly about death, but it is a great critique of modern western culture viewed through the lens of liturgical Christianity.

This second is a recording of a lecture provided by a former dean of the same seminary that I think cuts to the heart of what Christianity actually means. It is called "The Word of the Cross" by Rev. Dr. Thomas Hopko and is around two hours total and has been broken into four individual sections by an Orthodox podcast publisher:
Part 1
[Part 2] (http://www.ancientfaith.com/specials/hopko_lectures/the_word_of_the_cross_part_2)
Part 3
Part 4

Lastly, I would direct you toward the writings of C.S. Lewis. When I was a young teenage atheist, his arguments were very persuasive for me and have been very popular amongst most Christians. I know many Protestants, Orthodox, and Catholics who have all found their first theological footing in Lewis' work. Mere Christianity is probably the best source to steer you toward, but I think his best ideas can be found in The Abolition of Man, The Great Divorce, and Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. Since you've professed a preference for audio content, I will point you toward a YouTube playlist of the series of BBC radio broadcast lectures that C.S. Lewis gave during WWII that were the core of what later became Mere Christianity.

I'm tempted to also suggest that you read Thomas Merton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Kirkegaard, Dostoyevsky, St. John Chrysostom, St. Thomas Aquinas, and many, many others. Enjoy your journey!

For the most part, Christians are confused as to why the apostles made such a big deal about the resurrection beyond that of Christ's. They weren't talking about "going to Heaven when you die," which is partially true but it sells us short on what we've been promised. If you want to read into this subject, I highly recommend reading Surprised by Hope by NT Wright.

In terms of our cosmology, those who have been saved do enter Heaven (often called Paradise for the sake of clarity) to join God and the saints. We will not have bodies but our person will survive through death in the Lord's presence. After the Lord's Coming, the universe will experience the resurrection and we will be subject to the final judgement, at which point the saints will live in the resurrected Heaven and Earth with God.

The idea of us being asleep is generally held to refer to our bodies being dead, while our person remains alive. Essentially, a conscious disembodiment, with a dream being the closest real analogy that we have to that image. This period ends with the resurrection, when our person is reunited with our bodies, and we get to experience God's glory in full.

There's theological nuance here (and to be fair, a lot of heresy) but that's basically how it's expected to play out.

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.

First off, I'd say do not be ashamed for asking questions like these. They shouldn't be viewed like a curse or an outrage. It just means your using a different lens to understand the methods/functionality of the universe.

Science, is one of these methods. I see it as a rational lens that uncovers the mechanism of how God allots the universe and life to exist/function.

I've found the difficulty can arise when the findings of the "lens" seemingly conflict with the indications given by the map. It becomes necessary then to have a reliable and accurate compass. This compass I've found is a relationship with the God of the Universe, from which come all methods of discerning right and wrong. It helps me to understand where I am in relation to my observations.

(Essentially, indicating that God is the source of all things and that, "all truth is God's truth". Meaning my observations, if they are true, ultimately trace back to the ultimate source.)

So then how do you know if this compass is an accurate one? Well, I believe the God of the Universe deeply wants us to unravel that question and ultimately to have a relationship with us. He makes this known through a myriad of different ways. The most prominent will be those written down in an old book you'll find pretty much all over the place, mainly hotels. Furthermore, He demonstrates (perhaps explains) His power/existence through the love from friends, Chemistry, So's, Biology, courage from loved ones, Physics (had to throw in Physics). Traits of His existence are all around us.

To answer your question, yes I ask questions like that everyday. But my direction has changed, thanks to my compass. I realize that whatever truth/dilemma I'm analyzing is somehow, somewhere routed in the complexity and framework that is God. And that people far smarter than I have uncovered solutions through the lenses of their lifetimes.

Also, Mere Christianity is a book I highly reccommend. It has helped guide me through many different facets.

And additionally, here's some vids of Jesus' teachings that I really enjoy:

Sermon on the Mount

Light of the World

Keep asking questions man, keep digging. The truth is out there.

> Do you consider a fear of Hell do be an adequate reason to believe in/have a relationship with God?

Fear is never really an ideal reason to do something of moral consequence, but it can serve as something of a starting point to real growth and progress. The example is somewhat trite, but let's say that you hate your Intro to Microeconomics class and only crack open the textbook because you're scared of failing. Poring over the pages, you find that you actually love the subject and want to major in it (if so: congrats! You'll end up employed!). Fear might serve as the initial impetus, but it can't (or at least shouldn't) propel you towards further progress in the field.

The only truly valid reason to persist in Christian faith is the love of God.

>I just feel like no matter what I do, I will go to Hell if there actually is one.

Never despair of God's mercy.

>where I want to believe in God but I can't

As Thomas Merton said in prayer, "the desire to please you [i.e. God] does in fact please you." Wanting to believe, even when unable to actually do it, is not something that God will hold against you.

>I would go to Hell because of my selfishness to feel happy and safer

If heaven were closed off to people who on earth experienced some degree of selfishness and of desire to feel happy and safer, it would be empty.

>foolishly trying to sell my soul to people when I was 12.

God doesn't punish people for stupid things they do when they're 12. In any case, one's soul belongs to God alone.

Have a chat with your therapist about the anxiety and if you're still interested in the theological side of things, I'd recommend checking out C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce.

>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?

Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology defines God's immutability as follows:

> God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes, and promises, yet God does act and feel emotions, and he acts and feels differently in response to different situations. (p. 163)

Note that this is just one definition, and the various systems of thought within Christianity may have slight variations. There are also side debates on what it means for God to "change his mind" or to have knowledge of future events.

What I think is most crucial to Christianity is that God is unchangeable in his essence (he has always been God and will never cease to be God) and his attributes (he is always loving, just, merciful, independent, truthful, all-knowing, and so on, and these attributes are perfectly expressed at all times). This allows God the freedom to act differently in response to human decisions, yet his actions are always in accordance with his attributes and ultimate purpose for the universe, and his omnipotence ensures that his actions will have the desired effect. The Holy Spirit, being a member of the Trinity, would also possess these qualities.

Mormonism deviates from this significantly by asserting that at one time God was just a man, thereby denying immutability of being. The doctrine of eternal progression, as far as I understand it, means that the Mormon God's attributes are always improving, and that God today is better than what he was yesterday. What's left looks nothing like the God of Christianity or Judaism. If Mormon God can change in one direction, what guarantee do we have that he won't change in the other direction and start getting worse? What's to stop Mormon God from being de-exalted back to a man?

When asking questions about the nature of God, it's important to realize that Christianity and Judaism disagree on nearly every point with Mormonism. Claiming to be a restoration of the Christian church doesn't give Mormonism the right to rewrite the definition of God for standard Christianity.

idk_and_idc did a great job answering your questions. I'm no theologian, but I had many of the same questions before I started coming to church. I know that I am by no means qualified to answer all of your questions, but I may have some great places to direct you. I'm not sure if you're looking for resource recommendations, but I thought I'd suggest a few that seem relevant to your post.

• Across the Spectrum: By far the best "intro to theology" book I've read. It covers the ideas of predestination & free will, evolution and creationism, hell, etc. It's not light reading by any means but if you're seriously interested on getting your mind around the various evangelical thoughts on a wide range of commonly discussed issues, it is the #1 place I suggest looking.
  
  "The authors carefully examine positions taken by evangelical scholars on seventeen seminal issues. They lay out the biblical, theological, and philosophical arguments for each position in point-counterpoint fashion and discuss possible objections. "
  
  http://www.amazon.com/Across-Spectrum-Understanding-Evangelical-Theology/dp/080103793X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344124761&sr=8-1&keywords=across+the+spectrum
  
  
• http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/07/09/making-sense-of-scriptures-inconsistency/
  
  A blog post. The description is "Here's a short course on the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament."
  
  
• I haven't found C.S. Lewis to be an "easy" read by any means. I love the way one of my friends sums it up: "C.S. Lewis is wonderful to quote because he states things in a unique way. However, it is difficult to read large portions of his words because of the unique way in which he writes." That said, Mere Christianity is a book I recommend to any any person inquiring for more information about the faith.
  
  http://www.amazon.com/Mere-Christianity-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652888/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344124813&sr=1-1&keywords=mere+christianity
  
  I joined reddit specifically to respond to your inquiry, so I hope I did it right! :) I find your questions to be very insightful & if I can try to be of any further assistance please be sure to let me know.

The heaven of popular culture is not the heaven of the Bible. For one, Jesus taught of a heaven that is present now. He often said things like, "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand" and he told his followers to tell people, "The Kingdom of Heaven has come near to you". The Kingdom of Heaven is a present reality for those in Christ.

Also, the floating in the clouds with gold harps as a final destination is also off. The clearest picture of eternity in the Bible is Revelation 21-22, and even that you can't read too literally. The Christian hope isn't to escape from earth to heaven, but rather for heaven to come to earth in the resurrection. For a better picture of new creation, the resurrection, and the hope of Christians see N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope.

If at any point you'd like to join us, you're welcome. The gates will always be open.

If I can let you know, you're not alone. I'm 32 and hopefully next year my gf of 4 years and I are planning on getting married. It isn't easy, but waiting is possible. Being with likeminded friends helps. And perspective takes time. In the bubble of school a lot of things look fun. But in the real world, with real consequences, not so much. These things do have emotional and psychological consequences that you will take with you into your future relationships. Waiting is a means of protecting those future relationships.

Now for those questions, yes they can get annoying. But you don't have to reinvent the wheel. There have been many smart Christian writers, theologians, artists, philosophers, apologists, etc... who have given these issues a lot of thought and you would do well to get acquainted with them. I'd recommend something like Grudem's Systematic Theology for basic doctrine. For specific questions, Tim Keller's The Reason For God is pretty popular, and I'm liking philosopher Douglas Groothuis's Christian Apologetics.

it all depends on the bank and individual, every bank has both good and bad financial planners, unfortunately the only way to find out is trial and error.....FP's quite often also wont take customers that dont have investment money, their main purpose in the banks is to deal with higher dollar value clients and help them come up with a plan for retirement and other major life events like kids college, starting a business, purchasing a vacation home etc....they are supposed to look at your entire financial situation and help you develop your financial strategy as it were.....typically every financial planner I have ever known in the bank (myself included) didnt work with beating debt for clients....reguar financial advisor (account manager or whatever they are called at your FI) should be able to do this for you, unfortunately the quality of a lot of them is even worse than the FPs.....if you want to try a financial officer go ask the receptionist to book an appointment, try to find who is booking the furthest in advance because they are most likely going to be the most experienced/longest tenured officer there and going to know more (assuming they are willing to help)......

 

I would highly highly recommend you check you a guy named Dave Ramsey he is one of the best resources I have ever seen and he lives for helping people get out of debt and build wealth the smart way....he is pretty extreme in some of his strategies but they do work! and if you dont want to follow exactly to the letter it just takes a little longer (eg. he says no going out to eat until you are outta debt, but my wife and I did while we were climbing out, we just made sure we budgeted for it elsewhere and it just made it a little longer getting out, but not by much if you stick to the budget)

 

This is the link for one of his best selling books, the link is amazon but you can get an e-version as well, its cheap and pretty entertaining and a great read cuz it walks you through the "baby steps" of getting out of debt and building wealth....he also does a daily radio show/podcast that is excellent to listen to and its free!

<https://www.amazon.ca/Total-Money-Makeover-Classic-Financial/dp/1595555277/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469806019&sr=8-1&keywords=the+total+money+makeover>

this is the hardcover and its only 20 bucks, i think the softcover is a little less...they carry his books in chapters and any major bookstore

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!

There's an excellent view of world to come in NT Wright's book Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. In short, the angels-playing-harps-on-clouds view of heaven is completely unsupported by the Bible, and there's a world of things to do and make better, absolutely well-suited to our being human.

We will be praising God in our work, just as we praise God in our work on Earth. And there will be amazingly awesome choirs and things for standing around and going "Great is our God," just as we have pretty good choirs for that on Earth. But it's absolutely not all we're doing.

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.

Why not just start covering a particular book of scripture together? You could go through a short book, and anyone with a Bible would be plenty capable of following along.

You could also do a study on Systematic Theology. That doesn't have to be big and complicated; you could just look at certain interesting topics, like the canon of scripture, or the authority of scripture, or something like that. If you are interested in that, I would recommend Systematic Theology by Wayne grudem because it is fairly thorough, but also very clearly put for anyone to read.

I think it is great that you are wanting to welcome non-believers as well! Still though, I would encourage you to keep your discussions centered on Christ and the Gospel, regardless of whatever specifics you may be discussing. In other words, be welcoming to non-believers, but don't feel like you need to program specifically for them. Just be consistent in proclaiming Christ and the Gospel - that has value for everyone.

To feel God's presence: faith = action. If you want to move forward in your spiritual journey then move forward. That's the scripturally supported way to feel God's presence. This modern notion of going to a building 1-hour a week with the expectation of a Matrix-esque instant download of peace, comfort, safety and happiness is what is called "cheap grace".


Saving faith is inextricably tied to action and discipleship is engagement. I suggest reading The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If you don't want to buy it then I'm sure your town Library has a copy.


Bonhoeffer coined the phrase "cheap grace" which he said was grace without discipleship. The most powerful times I feel God's presence, when it literally overflows within me, is when I'm being a good steward – putting faith into action by serving.

I'd be happy to suggest some titles. (And I hope my comment didn't seem to insinuate that I thought you had unrealistic expectations about a spiritual moment of awakening or anything. I don't think that at all.) I understand what you mean about feeling that God might be hiding from you if He exists given that you've made some sincere attempts to know Him via the Bible, church, etc.

John Polkinghorne might be a good author to check out. He's a physicist who writes a lot about science & theology. (I suggest him b/c some of your authors you listed lead me to believe you're very confident in science and not sure how religion still has a place or provides evidence for God? Maybe?) Here's a good book of his that could get you started.

Have you read any C.S. Lewis? I personally found his arguments to be fairly compelling, but understand he's not compelling for everyone. Mere Christianity is his best known work, but all of his stuff is pretty great.

In any case, I do hope that these suggestions are in some way helpful in how your journey of wrestling with God's potential existence.

First, no one can convince you of God's existence except Him. I know, I was not raised Christian, not even close. I came to Christ as an adult, much to the amazement of my Christian friends and much to the horror of my secular friends and family. Ask, seek, knock Matt 7:7, it sounds like an easy solution but it isn't. If following God were simple then Jesus' death would have been unnecessary. If following Jesus were easy in a fallen world, then there would be no apostasy, there would be no need for caution, there would be no hypocrisy; but in reality there is.

Second, God calls us to love him with all that we are. Our hearts, mind and soul. God does not want mindless zombies. [Luke 10:27 & Deut 6:5] If you know a Christian who isn't thoughtful, then you probably know one who is deceived. In fact, throughout history you will find that many of the best educated people were Christians. All but one of the first universities in the fledgling US were Christian schools. Why? Because God warns us to be discerning so that we will not be deceived by lies, well told lies but lies all the same.

Third, read the Bible and study its' history. There is a lot of information available on these topics. Also study prophecy. Prophecy is given to the Church for several reasons, one of which is to testify to God's nature, the nature that allows him to lay out history before it happens.

Give God a chance and HE will show you his character and nature, but you do have to seek Him out. I'm sorry if that's not what you want to hear but it is true.

Resources, by far a drop in the bucket of the preponderance of information:

Is Jesus Real? Non-biblical evidence Short video, that goes over some of the information for a historical Jesus. Much is taken from the next link, The Divine Evidence.

The Divine Evidence Article Index Tons of articles to go through here.

Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul

Christian Martyrs Several part series, from Foxe's book Christian Martyrs of the world. This is an important part of Church history, it's good to see where the Church has been.

Mere Christianity Someone else suggested this and it's a good read. Some people have a negative view of Lewis, but I think his story and published writings are pretty inline with the Bible. At least the ones I have read.

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.

I've been reading Dr. William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith and finding it to be pretty stimulating so if you want something on the more academic end then that could be good.

CS Lewis's The Great Divorce is a good, quick read with an interesting take on the natures of Heaven and Hell.

Rev. Dr. Mary Kathleen Cunningham is a very good scholar who I studied under during undergrad and who has put together a very nice reader which surveys the spectrum of belief in the creationism/evolution debate called God and Evolution which is good if you're interested in that kind of thing.

Dr. Craig Keener has a good, cohesive commentary on the New Testament which you can buy as a single volume called The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament.

So there's a few to start out with. Let me know if you're looking for anything more specific and I can try to help (I have a budding theological library in my apartment).

Oh hey, that's me! :)

I just want to say that I think all the books posted so far are worth a read. I second the recommendation of Vines' and Brownson's books for their thoughtful, in-depth biblical analysis from folks who love the Bible and have a very high view of Scripture. (They're also great people.) And Jeff Chu's book is a fascinating look at the different ways people wrestle with their faith and sexuality. (He's also great people.)

Since I lurk here, I guess I should say something about my own book, huh?

Torn is aimed squarely at an evangelical audience, especially for those who aren't yet affirming; it walks them through the human side of the issue, what it's like to grow up gay and evangelical, why people are gay, where the church has missed the mark, etc. It also gets into the biblical questions (again, with a high view of Scripture) though that's not the sole focus of the book like it is with Vines and Brownson. It's designed to be more accessible for folks who haven't gone very deep on this yet, to help them understand why it matters so much and what they can do about it. I like to think it complements the other books well.

Dude, you need to research your shit. Stop this apathy and get some knowledge, it's the only thing that I know of that can stop the guilt your feeling.

The witnesses are wrong in a lot of ways, you made a really good step by joining this board. You need to be the change you want to see, research the bible and history, figure out what you actually believe and learn it well enough that you can defend it.

This will help you get over the guilt, IDK what to do about your family situation. That is something else entirely but I think its a really good idea for you to gain some real knowledge about the witnesses past and about their theology.

I recommend starting with "The History of God" by Karen Armstrong: http://www.amazon.com/History-God-000-Year-Judaism-Christianity/dp/0345384563

Its a great book, easy read, and I think it will help a lot. Good luck brother.

Sure. The idea that we go to another space called "Heaven" as spirits for all eternity is a very modern one. It's not what is taught in the Bible, and it has never been an orthodox Christian belief.

Heaven is the space where God resides, like another dimension. God created the earth in such a way that it kind of "overlapped" with God's space. Because of human rebellion (i.e. "sin"), we've lost the ability to be in full communion with God in that space. While heaven is still there and can interact with us, we cannot interact with it (at least not in the way we were meant to).

God's goal is to fully restore the relationship between our world and heaven. Revelation describes heaven coming down to earth, not us going up to heaven. God intends to make creation like new, restoring the heaven/earth relationship and wiping away the effects of human sin.

There's still a belief that the human soul is in some way protected by God after death, and that we exist in some kind of unembodied state, but that's not the end goal. If that's "life after death", then the real hope of the Christian faith is "life after life after death".

That's a super simplified version. If you want to know more, check out this video from the Bible Project, or read "Surprised by Hope" by N.T. Wright.

Yes I was raised Roman Catholic. My Mother is still practicing but very open and understanding. She sees that incorporating some Buddhist Philosophy in my life has brought peace and happiness to me and that's what's most important to her - not how I found that peace and happiness.

This book, Living Buddha, Living Christ may be helpful to you. It is about the many similarities between Christianity and Buddhism.

I don't really consider myself Buddhist either. I kind of ebb and flow between Atheist, Agnostic, and a Pantheist but Buddhist Philosophy really helps me in my daily life.

I would recommend two books, Wild at Heart by John Eldridge and Captivating by John and Stasi Eldridge. They are both amazing books which talk about the needs and natures of both the man and the woman in regards to relationship.

I have not found any literature that does a better job of talking about the unique needs and strengths of both the man and the woman. He is a Christian author, though, and his faith informs his writing to a great degree, so it would depend on you tolerance for religious writing. Still, I would encourage you to read both together.

Wild at Heart: https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Heart-Revised-Updated-Discovering/dp/1400200393/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?keywords=wild+at+heart&qid=1565098503&s=gateway&sr=8-2

Captivating: https://www.amazon.com/Captivating-Revised-Updated-Unveiling-Mystery/dp/1400200385/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=captivating+by+john+and+stasi+eldredge&qid=1565098553&s=gateway&sprefix=captivating&sr=8-1

1. Nope. Not rude or disrespectful.
   
2. http://www.orthodoxiya.fm/ (If you speak Arabic, here is an Orthodox on-line radio station. If not- you'll be just as lost as I am with this! However, if you like chants, there is some good chanting to be found here. If you prefer or know English better, then this might be more up your alley: Ancient Faith Radio (music/chanting, podcasts, blogs)
   
   Well, I'll just share books and links with you that I just shared to someone else on another thread. I don't know how useful some of them will be for you, since you don't have a Christian background, but there they are anyway. Regarding specific differences between Copts, Armenians, Old Believer, and Eastern Orthodox, I don't know of any books that specifically address the differences (but Ethiopians are Copts and Greeks/Russians/Antioch are all Eastern Orthodox). ;)
   
   The Orthodox Faith by Thomas Hopko (It's all on-line- so no need to buy anything here.)
   
   Beginning to Pray by Anthony Bloom (Wonderful resource for anyone.)
   
   On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius (Catholics of all stripes should approve of this, but this is definitely something the East looks at more frequently in my observation. Also all on-line.)
   
   The Meaning of Icons by Vladimir Lossky (Icons are often overlooked in book recommendations on Orthodox Christianity. It's a shame. It's one of the most fascinating subjects.)
   
   On Acquisition of the Holy Spirit by St. Seraphim of Sarov (Even the pope has recognized him as a saint. This is a wonderful and deceptively simple (i.e. heavy) read. This is also all on-line. There are also six you-tube videos for this so you can just listen: https://youtu.be/pBynRA0wNg8 )
   
   Also, I don't think this has much to do with theology, but I really liked them:
   
   The Way of a Pilgrim (I recommend this book to everyone. Always.)
   
   How to Live a Holy Life by Gregory Postnikov (This is a small book. It's deceptively simple. The doing of what's in it is more difficult.)
   
   

3. For an Orthodox view, I highly recommend this podcast series on the bible to you. Dr. Constantinou of the University of San Diego essentially covers what she would in one of her survey courses. This goes in-depth on the topics of scripture (old and new). It truly starts with the second podcast (Inspiration and Inerrancy) and moves on to cover oral tradition, bible manuscripts, the septuagint, the canon, translations and versions, patristic interpretation, the school of Alexandria, the school of Antioch, and the Latin fathers in other podcasts. Search the Scriptures: Introduction to the Bible (Lesson 2)

I didn't read through all of it, but from skimming over it I think you may be interested in some of these (you didn't say what age your kids were so I'm just giving you everything I know of):

• Any books/documentaries on the Summerhill School (A. S. Neill's school)
  
  
• Anything about Peaceful Parenting. Such as Parenting With Love And Logic.
  
  
• Stefan Molyneux's parenting videos
  
  
• Resources for Infant Educarers books and blogs, such as Janet Lansbury's blog, Your Self-Confident Baby.
  
  
• Any Montessori books
  
  These are all about respecting your child, seeing them as a capable human being, and including them in the family.

Not to worry, there is a reasonable, rational foundation for the Christian faith! I strongly encourage you to check out the following resources:

Mere Christianity by CS Lewis
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0060652926?pc_redir=1408455123&robot_redir=1

7 Days that Divide the World by John Lennox
Video lecture version of book:
http://vimeo.com/m/60014422

Cold Case Christianity by J Warner Wallace
http://coldcasechristianity.com

There is also a free pdf of the entire book floating around online :)

They've made a huge difference for me in helping me keep my belief in the bible as the word of God despite coming to embrace scientific fact.

Be encouraged friend, God wants us to love him with our whole self: body, spirit, and MIND. The evidence is there!

Heh, I'm still just at level one, so I find myself being more helpful than not. :)

If you'd read enough of my comments, the following probably wouldn't come as much of a surprise. I would not use more debt to handle my current debt.

What you've outlined here is a plan to borrow what amounts to about half of your gross income... and it's mostly unsecured debt (not backed by collateral), which is why you need a cosigner. These are all huge red flags!

My advice would be to pretty much do the opposite. Keep paying minimums on the credit cards, but pay extra on the card with the smallest balance. Once it's paid off, throw your extra money at the next smallest balance, and so on. This is going to take planning and being intentional with your money. Start making monthly budgets if you're not doing that already.

I'm not being ugly here, please understand, but your income is on the low side. I would pick up an extra part-time job and kick all of its income over to paying off the cards even more quickly. You could probably get an extra $500/mo by just delivering pizzas on the weekends.

After the cards are paid off, then you get to save up some cash (you'll find that you've got more of that sticking around now that the credit cards are gone), and buy a computer. Save a little more and buy a desk and chair.

I recommend picking up this book: Total Money Makeover. It's pretty much the only thing that gave me traction with getting out of debt.

Best of luck!

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.

It's a complex question with a complex answer. If we take our sources seriously, then our first clue lies in the Ascension in Acts 1. After Jesus moves up into the clouds, two angels appear and tell the Eleven that Jesus will return in the same way he left. So, we either take this that he will descend back down, or it will be a shocking event that we don't expect.

Acts 2 includes the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, which could be construed as the return, but that requires a reading of John, which Luke would not have and thus likely should not be considered an interpretation of the text.

Okay, but what about what Jesus said, because that's what really matters, right? Well, we have only a few bits of text outside of the Olivet discourses. As for those, Matt 24-25, Mark 13, Luke 21, they are a bit crazy. You have what appear to be clear allusions to the sack of Jerusalem, which make sense in regards to the prompt for the whole discussion regarding the stones of the Temple. But then comes the more abstract notions of things passing away or the goats and the sheep, so how literal do we need to be regarding all of this?

Honestly, allegorize it, because Paul does with the Thessalonians in his second letter. Heck, that's what the Church historically has done with this material. The key is not how Jesus returns, but that he will return.

So, how come Jesus never came back? Because it isn't the time to come back. We're almost done getting his name to every language on this planet, and we may have other people among the stars to tell as well. I mean, Christianity grew silently for the first three hundred years, spurted out for a century in the Roman Empire, silently again until 1500 with colonialism, though I would contend that the true growth in that regard, much like in Rome, came also silently through the true-hearted missionaries and Christians who lived the faith.

Here's an excellent book that I think really encapsulates eschatology and the mission of the church. I know I used quite a few odd words, so if you have questions, I'd be happy to clarify or expound a bit more.

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.
  
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