I Never Knew You

When I talk with Christians these days about my shift from Christianity to atheism, I get a lot of “knowing” looks accompanied by interesting input about why I’m wrong to doubt the Bible, or how I’m deaf to God’s voice in my life, or how they know that God is just using this time as a way for me to grow and learn, and that He’ll bring me back to Himself one day as witness to His providence and power.

None of these “knowing” looks or remarks that I get really bothers me at all – except one. And that’s when a Christian says to me as boldly and authoritatively as you please – “Obviously, you must have never really known Jesus.”

Hmmm….

Well, I’d like to address this essay directly to those with such spiritual discernment that they seem to be gifted with the knowledge that I never “knew” Jesus, or that I was never a “true” Christian. . . .
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Why Won't God Heal Amputees?

Skeptics reading these pages are probably already familiar with it, but I recently ran across an excellent web site called Why Won't God Heal Amputees?

The author does a great job of walking through a lot of the same observations and issues I'm trying to address here, and does so in a style that makes the believer really ask himself/herself some tough questions. Precisely the kinds of questions I began asking myself several years ago. Healthy questions.

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Blinded by the Light

You may have seen this little test. Count the number of F’s in the sentence below:

“Finished files are the result of years of scientific
study combined with the experience of many years.”

As you can probably guess, very few people (about 15%) get all six on the first reading. The brain tends to skip the ones in “of” based on how we process language. By contrast, children who cannot read get all six every time.

Now let’s imagine replacing the sentence above with the text of the entire Bible. And instead of the letter “F,” let’s look for inconsistencies, contradictions, absurdities, etc. As a Christian, my score was worse than 15% - closer to 0. And this was still true after multiple readings and countless hours of study across multiple translations, lexical tools, and commentaries.

Why was I unable to perceive these issues with the Bible? Certainly not because they don’t exist. As it turns out, the answer to this question is the most critical concept to understanding my whole deconversion process. In fact, without understanding this answer, any Christian who attempts to read anything I’ve written about specific problems with Christianity is undertaking an exercise in futility. So let’s see how we might solve this mystery. . .
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E Pluribus Unum? (Part II)

Let me start this post by apologizing for the long interval between Part I and Part II. This is a difficult topic to tackle succinctly, without going into pages and pages of boring detail. And I still fear I didn’t do a very great job of it.

In any case, I want to continue describing my thoughts as I explored the contrast between the Christian assertion of unity/continuity regarding the Bible and its message vs. the discontinuity/plurality that we observe not only in its interpretation and application by people, but in it’s very text(s).

These thoughts led me to understand that there is no one Bible. There are many.
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E Pluribus Unum? (Part I)

E Pluribus Unum - “Out of many, one.”

This Latin motto, though primarily associated with the political and historical origins of the United States, can be equally well applied to describe a Christian view of the Bible.
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My New Bible

The Schofield Reference Bible
The Dake Study Bible
The Thompson Chain Reference Bible

I've read all of these, but this is, hands down, my new favorite.

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Quick! Send in the Apologists!

There’s a little-known apologetic work written by a young, very sincere Christian author back in 1990. The paper seeks to overcome secular objections to the veracity of the Bible by detailing the archeological evidence supporting it’s authenticity, the miraculous harmony of it’s message across so many authors and time periods, and it’s supreme and ongoing relevance as illustrated by dozens of prophecies fulfilled against all natural probability. The author drew from many other apologetic works, both contemporary and historical to weave a compelling case against any Biblical detractors, with the intention of leading as many as he could to an enlightened acceptance of the truth of the Bible as God’s word to man and the only means of his salvation.

Tactfully and humbly entitled “The Bible: You’d Better Believe It”, I wrote this research paper as a Senior in high school and presented it orally to my pagan English class.
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Do You Believe in Ghosts??

Ghosts. We’re all familiar with them. From old spooky stories to modern movies, they’re a primal part of our collective psyche. And we almost always imagine them the same way. Think of a movie like– well, like “Ghost.” The ghosts are portrayed as incorporeal phantoms that inhabit the physical body, emerging upon death as white, misty apparitions visible to few, if any in the mortal world. And though they inhabit the body and are invisible, they are substantive in and of themselves apart from the body.

I think this is very close to the way most of us think of the spirit or soul. (Some try to make a distinction between spirit and soul, but for my purposes here, the distinction has no real relevance).

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Obviously, You Must Be Depraved and Without Morals Now.

I'll be posting some more specifics regarding my observations about the Bible and reality in general that led to my rejection of Christianity, but now that I've covered a few, I thought I might address an obvious question:

Without a moral code like the Bible to follow, how can you avoid a slippery slope that spirals down into depravity and evil?

A moral code is indeed essential, and the Bible makes a nice cheetsheet or canned version of this. Without a predefined code, though, I must either find or make one of my own to adopt. This is what Christians may lament as the basis for moral relativism, and I understand that. So I must ask myself, is there a universal moral code out there somewhere that we should be adhering to?

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Let's Talk Specifics

So with my newfound perspective, what did I realize? What did I notice that ultimately led to my rejection of the Bible? Here’s where I’d like to get into a few (not all) of the specifics, and the first area I’ll cover deals with the age-old debate over the inerrancy of the Bible.

I’ve read and studied the Bible quite a lot in my life. Read it cover to cover repeatedly. Studied the original Greek. Analyzed it’s historical and theological content under the tutelage of professors with PhDs. Nevertheless, amazingly, I was blind to any issues with the Bible itself in my Christian mode. To me, charges of internal incongruities were founded on baseless attacks by the secular world, and I felt obligated to refute them. With my new perspective, though, they were revealed for what they really are:

Inconsistencies and Contradictions.
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Perspective

Growing up, I spent most of my elementary school years living in a yellow house on 5th Street in Enid, Oklahoma. At the time I lived there with my sister and brother, the house seemed huge to us, one of the biggest we’d ever lived in. It was two stories with a big back yard and a large elm tree out front. The lowest branches on the tree where far too high to reach for climbing.

One day, years after we had moved away, I had a chance to see the house again, and it was as if someone had taken not only the house, but the entire street and shrunk it in the clothes dryer. The big house seemed more like a cottage. The back yard was actually kind of small. And you could reach up and touch the lowest branches on the elm without any effort at all. It was a whole new perspective. Of course none of it had changed. I was the one who had changed.
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What Happened To You, Man???

I can imagine it now. I run into an old acquaintance of mine from high school or early college and we immediately launch into the requisite familiarities, catching up and remembering old times. I say something like:
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