It really broke my heart to see that you felt that you had failed your mother as a daughter. You didn’t fail me, and if you’re reading this, somewhere out there, I want you to let you know that.
I was encouraged by your words because there was a time when I also felt guilty, like I had failed others as a brother, as a son, and as a friend. I also felt like the definition of a disappointment when those closest to me, the ones I cared about most deeply, yearned for the same “spiritual” support I once gave them as a Christian. I would be lying if I didn’t say that a lot of my anger at Christianity is partly rooted in the fact that I can no longer give them the camaraderie in their Christian walk that they seek.
Every day, I have the chance to give them that support. And every day, I feel pain in making the decision to let them down, yet again. Over and over.
I wasn’t prepared for this when I left Christianity. I mean, I was prepared to be hurt by other people. I was willing to take it all, no matter how severe the consequences to myself, when I left. So I thought I knew what I was getting into.
But I was not prepared to hurt those closest to me. I wasn’t prepared for feeling like a terrible person, a disappointment, a person who, in the minds of those who loved me, was an outspoken enemy of the God that they depended on to get through each day.
I know it can be confusing to feel deeply hurt by the fact that you – the real, genuine you — are hurting people you love.
The whole experience made me upset at how fully I had given myself to Christianity before, creating many relationships based on an identity that I could no longer honestly sustain. It wasn’t just Christianity I was angry at – it was the fact that I had brought so deeply into it, setting myself up to let so many people down when I realized it wasn’t true.
I don’t know if you feel any of that. But I think your story is powerful because a lot of people do – many people whose deconversion stories touch my heart mourn about how their lack of belief seems to be doing terrible things to the people they love, which makes them angry at religion and at the fact they ever were religious in the first place.
I understand enough about this situation to know that I don’t understand yours, because I have yet to meet someone who fully understands mine. Our experiences are our own. You don’t really know how difficult it is to be deeply religious and then realize it isn’t true — letting all these people who respected and loved you down – unless you’ve experienced it. Sometimes, it’s hard to know the right thing to do. Sometimes you feel lost, like there are no right decisions – as if any decision you make will lead to regret. And you may be right.
Maybe my advice may sound cold and cruel or selfish. But I’m saying it with tears in my eyes. I wish I could hold your heart or give you a hug for what I’m about to say next. It’s a hard thing to admit; difficult words to embrace. It blew my world apart at first, and it’s only five words:
This is not your fault.
The fact that Christianity is not true is not your fault.
The fact that your mother is a Christian is not your fault.
The fact that you may have been raised Christian, only to find that Christianity was not true, is not your fault. Christianity was fabricated long before you were born; your parents were Christian before you took your first breath, most likely, and the myth was created hundreds of years before your time.
It’s not your fault your mother was a Christian, and it’s not your fault that what she believed isn’t true.
It’s not.
There have been times in my life when I wanted to make what other people believed about Christianity real and true. But it’s not. I may want to believe a dear friend doesn’t have cancer. But if he does, that’s the reality. And life is a process, sometimes, of making peace with things that aren’t true, and even with the fact that their presence is not OK.
And that’s OK.
If you had prayed with your mom, that would have been saying, in a sense, that you have a responsibility to make Christianity come to life for her, and you don’t. Christianity’s truth does not depend on you, and it is not our responsibility to uphold a lie.
I want you to know that the impact your story made on me caused me to realize that, to see the value of being genuine. It caused me to come to the tearful and heartfelt conclusion that I would rather live for a truth that draws a tear than for a lie that brings a smile.
And the knowledge of that leads to deeper, more sincere relationships. I think that’s what you learned from that experience – that this is what you want. That you want to be comforting, that you want to be a companion, that you want to be a friend, but that you want to do so as yourself, not as someone you pretend to be.
Your relationships have integrity. Even the limited relationship here, in the raw honesty of your postcard, has integrity.
It’s a pity I don’t know your name, because it would truly be an honor to meet you. But if I never do, and yet you end up reading this…please know that, even though we’ve never met, I can tell by your honesty that you are a beautiful person and a beautiful daughter.
I genuinely think that, if she understood you, your mother would be proud.
Tell me straight out, I call on you — answer me: imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, that same child who was beating her chest with her little fist, and raise your edifoce on the foundation of her unrequited tears — would you agree to be the architect on such conditions? Tell me the truth. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I tend to hesitate when a Christian asks why I left Christianity, because they’re usually looking for a silver bullet. There isn’t one. Leaving Christianity was a long, painful process that came after (and even during) periods of very sincere faith — and I know it might sound a bit arrogant, but upon leaving I had already explored many of the different alternatives for “real” Christianity and found them horribly inadequate.
So when I finally left Christianity, there was nothing within the religion to hold onto. The archaeological evidence was missing, the emotional appeals were unappealing (and many were downright disturbing), the Bible was unreliable, scriptures seem contradictory, God as a concept made as much logical sense to me as a square circle, and so on. As a small sample, I wrote down 78 reasons that Christianity fueled my leaving, which hardly scratch the surface.
But that doesn’t fit in nice, polite, teatable conversation.
So I’ve come up more focused answer that seems to satisfy many Christians. It has a lot to do with my attempts to follow the Bible’s two greatest commandments: “Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The love of God made me hungry for more knowledge of Him and how He worked. And this led to more and more questions…
People may say I didn’t take God seriously enough, but I think it was just the opposite. I think, sometimes, if I had taken God less seriously, I might still be a Christian. But I was really trying to dedicate myself to someone I though was real and was my best friend, which gave me an unsatiable curiosity and drive to get to know Him better. I often wonder why more Christians aren’t obsessed with learning about God (unless, of course, they don’t really believe it).
To be “catfished” is to be tricked into thinking that a fake profile online is real. In the show, people fall in love with someone online who they thought, at first, was real. But the more they love them and care about them, the more they want to get to know them. It’s not like the lover is looking to disprove this person’s existence — far from it. They WANT the person to exist. And that fuels their drive for closer contact with them.
It was like that with me and God. I wanted to touch God, to feel Him, to be closer to Him. I wanted the Gospels to come to life for me. I wanted to know the definition of His love more profoundly in what I called my “soul.” And the more I did that, the more I noticed patterns that didn’t fit. Just as the person being “catfished” in the MTV show may eventually notice that the person they talk to is showing signs of not even being real…I began to notice several aspects of God that indicated it might all be a fraud. And the more I looked into it, the more it seemed to be true.
My love for God, for a while, was (I thought) enabling my ability to love for people. And this is where the discussion gets somewhat difficult, because Christians constantly say that the problem is that I valued people more than I valued God. But the thing is — people actually existed. I could touch them, feel them, talk to them, understand them. That didn’t happen with God. The less God appeared to be real, the more real people became for me. “Love your neighbor as yourself” and “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” were commands working against each other. The more I sought to love God, the more his lack of existence tended to become apparent. The more I strove to love people, the more I began to see that they were more real than God, and it became more and more difficult — and eventually impossible — to love a God who didn’t exist and people who did at the same time.
As a side note, I get terribly angry at the attitude that God must be heeded above people nowadays, because it effectively puts tape over my mouth and keeps me from expressing myself to many people I care about. They will ignore my words, my attitudes, my experiences, if they don’t correlate with what they think God is telling them. That bothers me greatly now, and I could feel, as a Christian, that this bothered many of the non-Christians I was beginning to talk to and befriend.
Eventually, in the last few months of my being a Christian, my suspicion that God didn’t exist was at a high. I still suspected He did, at the time, but the reality of other people’s existence — including people who were not Christian — was pressing on my consciousness. And my insatiable curiosity regarding His existence, based on my intense love of God at the time, made me increasingly uncomfortable, especially when I noticed indications that God was not as beautiful as I had thought He was — that he might have been a puppet or a dream of men that had several dark corners in his imaginary psyche.
Basically, there’s this Utopia. Everything in this Utopia is perfect. Le Guin paints it in fantastic colors, giving it incredible definition and beautiful scenery. The people are always happy — no guilt, and all full of pleasure and beauty. It’s like heaven.
But between the ages of 8 and 12, each child in this Utopia is told that, in this Utopia, is a room.
In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads, stand near a rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is. The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits haunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will come. The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes-the child has no understanding of time or interval – sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people, are there. One of them may come and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is locked, the eyes disappear. The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother’s voice, sometimes speaks. “I will be good,” it says. “Please let me out. I will be good!” They never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, “eh-haa, eh-haa,” and it speaks less and less often. It is so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.
And everyone in the city knows that the child is there, and that, for some reason, it has to be. Some people can figure the reason out; some can’t. And yet the child remains. And they are all disturbed upon finding out about the child. Le Guin states:
They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do.
If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed. The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child. Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years.
But eventually most of them rationalize a way out of it. After all — this is the best way things can work. And the knowledge of this poor child is what fuels a lot of their generosity. The knowledge that the child is in such a terrible place causes them to appreciate their own children, to appreciate the beauty of their own lives, to love their neighbors more, to embrace the fullness of what life has to offer, to make Omelas a better place.
I think Christianity works similarly. The knowledge that we all deserve hell (and, arguably, that some are going there) causes many Christians — myself included, once — to live vibrant lives, full of love for their fellowman and appreciation for beauty and God and existence. The more I knew the hell I was saved from, the more my appreciation grew.
And yet…Le Guin goes on to narrate there are some in Omelas who, after a time, grow quiet and disturbed. And one day, without much warning, they leave the city. Resolutely. Alone. Through the beautiful heaven and vibrant community…right through the gates, and the keep walking, as if they know where they are going, and they don’t come back. As Le Guin states:
They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
That story is one I read 7-8 years before I left Christianity, but it took the last few months of Christianity for it to really make its mark on my consciousness. As I strove to love my neighbor as myself, it became harder and harder to live a life of beauty based on the concept that some of the people I dearly loved would spend eternity in a place of torment, worse than the boy in Omelas.
And I grew gradually uncomfortable about this, and this was a major factor fueling my research, my analysis. Because if Christianity was true, I had to know and try to save as many as I could. It would take over the entirety of my life. And if it wasn’t, I could not base the entirety of my life on a fairy tale.
Now that I’ve walked a good ways from the myth of Heaven’s “Omelas,” so to speak, I tend to think I would not want to live based on a theology that said so many were sinners headed for hell. Even if it did exist. And it really is disturbing to know that the entirety of the supposed goodness of Christianity is based, for the most part, on the concept that its heaven depends on my, as an unbeliever, being tormented in hell forever. I followed a God who I thought was love and sought to love him and, like the catfished lover, I eventually found out that behind the persona was a fraud that took away from the relationships I could be having with people who did exist — and, in many cases, was actively hurting those relationships and my attitudes towards other people.
This is why I’m incredulous when Christians say, “Atheism is depressing. You die and that’s it.”
It seems so obviously better for me to die and perish than for me to do and go to heaven while someone else goes to hell. To say otherwise speaks of a disturbing heartlessness beneath the smiles and “love.”
So, for that and other reasons, I walked away to experience love, to more truthfully love my neighbor as myself. And for that love — as people walked away from Omelas, I walked away from God. Yes, both Omelas and God are myths. But were they real, I’d like to think I’d be uncomfortable with both if it meant suffering for my fellowman.
I agree with you with all my heart that people who spend their lives sewing doll clothes for a figment of their imagination have no business running a country, making laws, interfering in people’s sex lives, teaching in public schools, or getting us into wars against people who make a different kind of doll clothes for a different figment of the imagination.
Let the tailors of the garments of God sit in their tailor shops and stitch away, but let them stay there in their temples, out of government, out of the schools. And we who live among real people—real, badly dressed people, people wearing rags, people wearing army uniforms, people sleeping on our streets without a blanket to cover them —let us have true charity: Let us look to our people, and work to clothe them better.
Looking, presumably, for wandering kids to shoot dead.
And much of this country cheered.
A bus headed towards giving children shelter and food was turned away by an angry mob.
The most popular candidate of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, speaks constantly of getting rid of “illegals.” People are incredulous. How do you get rid of 11 million people?
……..it’s been done.
I’m not saying Trump is Hitler.
But if Trump came out and said that “illegals” should be packed in gas chambers to save this nation from its problems…I seriously doubt his poll numbers would go down.
I don’t have a problem working with religious people; I do it all the time. For example, I got up this morning thanks to an alarm on a phone that is likely built by several religious people. I put on clothes that were likely tailored by religious people, brought in a store that was staffed, largely, by religious people. I then got into a car that was mostly built by religious people, drove down a road that was largely built and funded by religious individuals, and came into my place of employment, which is largely staffed by religious people, so that I could get my paycheck, which is signed by religious people. And so it goes. So I obviously have no qualms about working and collaborating with religious people.
The problem comes when religious people expect me to act religious in order to work with him. If I came into my workplace and was expected to participate in a prayer, I would probably have a problem with that. I don’t want to fake endorsement of certain religious creeds that I don’t like. And I also think that if my boss is allowed to wax theological at my workplace, I should be able to respond with my own views on religion.
Many atheists and religious people seem to think that this is an unnecessarily militant position. I do not see it as militant. I see it as honest. I tend to think that if a place requires you to take a position of deference to a religion, the focus is less on the work being done, and more on endorsing the religion. Because I do not want to endorse religion, I am unlikely to want to participate in that environment. And if I do participate in that environment and religious views come up, I would like to reserve the right to speak my mind.
But this does not mean that I do not want to hang out with religious people. I have a lot of Christian friends, we hang out all the time, and we get along swell. If religion comes up, we talk about it candidly and openly. That does not mean, of course, that we are no longer friends. On the contrary, it shows that we are friends who are able to be honest with each other about our disagreements.
Where a lot of atheists and religious people get riled up is when we discuss my attitude towards attending a church sponsored soup kitchen with an evangelistic bent that that encourages prayer and has a sermon. I am unlikely to volunteer, and if I do volunteer and religion comes up, I reserve the right to speak my mind. My thinking is that I should be able to do that.
Honestly, why does religion have to do with getting people soup? I live perpetual confusion, here in Fort Worth, Texas, that so many think Christianity and soup kitchens need to go together. We didn’t need religion involved when I got my Starbucks coffee from the religious person across the counter. So there is nothing unusual about people getting food without religion being involved. Why does charity have to be so different? Why do we need to set up lines of religion in order to help people?
This is not just an annoyance that I have as an atheist. It is something that bothered me back when I was a Christian, as well. It seemed sometimes that all the denominations were competing to try to show they did more for the homeless. Why did charity have to be fueled by a drive to brand others with a religion’s seal? Even now, as an atheist, as much as I support secular efforts to make the world a better place for disadvantaged populations, I do not understand why anyone would be expected to toe a party line when it comes to helping others via charity.
When I go to McDonalds, my focus is on the burger, not on the religion of the person behind the counter. Why does that situation need to change when it comes to charity? Why should people be expected to pay for soup with respect for religious beliefs, or the lack thereof? If you want to help someone who needs food, help them. No need to draw religious or non religious lines.
So that is my basic position. I will work with people who are religious, but not if doing so carries the connotation, or shows an expectation, for me to respect religion myself.
Incidentally, this also applies to my stance on joining different social classes. While I agree with many progressive Christian conclusions on social issues, I disagree with the way most of them seem to come to their conclusions on the social issues. The concept of God as an authority figure creates a nonexistent puppet being that can manipulate people, and I tend to think that there is something fundamentally dishonest about endorsing that being or empowering it. I strongly think that doing things simply because we think God wants us to do them is a very dangerous thing to do. Rather, I think that we should do things because of variables that actually exist in the world. So while I may endorse a progressive Christian’s stance on a social issue, I reserve the right to voice strongly disagreement with how they came to that stance.
Fundamentalist Christians, it goes without saying, I disagree strongly with. But I also have a soft spot in my heart for them, because, in many cases, they are victims of the same thinking that many progressive Christians have. In my view, the enemy is not so much the people, as much as it is in the concept of God itself, a concept that has the power to override all human emotion, empathy, logic, and reason. Which is why I’m against using progressive Christian stances to manipulate fundamentalists. The problem, fundamentally, is God. That guy’s gotta go.
Because of this stance, many people say I’m not just an atheist, but an anti-theist.
Ever since I’ve become an atheist, I’ve been lectured by Christians on my lack of “humility.”
This seems odd to me, because I’m actually more humble than I was when I was a Christian. I mean, before I thought that the beliefs I had were taking me to heaven. My faith had the answer; it was a pity those headed towards hell refused it
Faith (especially faith like that) is a very prideful decision to make. According to Hebrews 11:1 (NIV), “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” After being an atheist for three years, it boggles my mind how much pride one would need to have in their intuition and emotions to decide to have faith in something that is beyond what can be empirically seen. That’s a level of arrogance I don’t think I’d ever be able to imitate again.
And the other thing is…I’ve gotten to know people more openly since I’ve left Christianity. When I was a Christian, part of having faith was believing that those who didn’t believe the right thing would be judged by the Bible’s God. But the more I’ve gotten to know people and sought to understand them, the more I’ve been humbled by them. Right now I’m humbled to the point that I think everyone has a story, and I respect their humanity and seek to understand their stories even when they are things I really disagree with, or things that make me upset.
Before I though some were saved and some were damned, and now I think we’re just people on a pale blue dot spinning in a mind-bogglingly vast universe, as we each figure out how to spend our seventy years (give or take). And while I care very much about this venture, I don’t have the pride or sense of superiority to say that anyone struggling through this life deserves eternal torment after leaving it. The humility of my journey in atheism has planted too much love in my heart to think anyone really deserves that.
It’s also, to tell you the truth, a bit stunning when a Christian answers detailed discussions of evidence regarding the veracity of amazing claims of things that supposedly happened 2000 years ago with, “I just have faith.” I can’t relate these days. I can’t “just have faith” — I am not proud enough of my intuition. The humility of my atheist experience has led me to be open to mystery, to look at probabilities and carefully come to decisions, to think about evidence and to invite skepticism. It is difficult for me to imagine, these days, having enough pride to say that something is “just so.”
It’s a beautiful journey for me, and part of its beauty is in its humility. The humility I feel as resident in the universe is similar to what you might find when looking down a powerfully moving stream, and the calm I feel is like the peace I that comes over when I walk through the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens.
I’m not saying it is this way for all atheists. But it is for this one, and several others I know.
I don’t think I will ever again have enough pride to reject and ignore so much empirical experience, and my fellowship with humankind and existence, for a faith that is immune to these experiences.
Christians have this annoying habit of acting like doubt on the “facts” of the Bible is a heart-and-soul issue. Or, worse, that it’s about the Holy Spirit (whatever that is — in my experience, even most Christians can’t make head or tails of it).
But the “fact” claims in the Bible aren’t abstract events that happened in some mythological space (at least, for most of Christendom). These are facts on external reality. And the best way to figure out external reality is with the tools of reasoning, the scientific method, and logic.
That’s not to say that your emotions are pointless. Emotions are important because they motivate whatever you decide to do with the facts you have. And, technically speaking, emotions can be facts themselves when felt internally (when you say “I feel sad” – yes, of course the emotion is relevant to that fact. Obviously, that’s different from, “Obama is President”). But when it comes to questions about whether claims of things that happened outside of you are true or not, we need evidence and reasoning, not emotions.
No, I’m not just saying this because I’m an atheist, because most Christians try to do this in every area of life, it seems, save Christianity. How well does your heart and soul work when figuring out how much you owe on taxes? Or figuring out tomorrow’s weather? Or trying to diagnose your care problem? Or how much is in your savings?
For things like this Christians usually rely on evidence and reasoning, not emotions. How much more so for facts that supposedly have much greater importance, like what happens after we die, or whether Jesus was resurrected?
I mean, you can’t even divine the approximate number of people living in Jerusalem in 33 AD with your heart, let alone whether some guy rose from the dead.
I really want to hammer this home, because it’s frustrating that Christians miss it. Christians, when you say Jesus rose from the dead, you’re talking about a physical tomb and a physical body and an actual event that happened in time and space. That act – there’s nothing mystical about it all. It either happened in real time and space, or it did not.
Can we talk about it that way, please? Can we please not get sidetracked with annoying testimonies about your emotional experience with God where He “showed” you that Jesus rose from the dead, or blame it on something supposedly mystical and deep like the Holy Spirit, or say it’s a heart thing or a soul thing? That’s missing the point completely. We are talking about an event that either happened or did not happen in real time and space. So, let’s look at this rationally, with reason and evidence, the same way we would look at whether literally any other event outside the illogically cordoned-off realm of Christian myth happened at that time.
I know it might be offensive to say that when you get sidetracked on these mystical rabbit trails, you’re being annoying. But it’s true. I mean, how would you feel if you asked who won the game yesterday, and I told you who I thought won according to my heart instead of looking at the standings? Or if you asked the teller how much was in your bank account, and she said, “Well, my heart tells me that you have a million dollars in there”? Wouldn’t that be annoying after a while?
So please, knock it off. Give me evidence. Give me reasons. And I’m not saying that because I’m some guy who doesn’t feel emotions. I’m not wooden and void of feeling – my emotional well is deep and very passionate, which is why I want to make sure that the directions I turn my emotions in are actually legit. I don’t want to passionately chase phantoms. I want to dedicate my life and motivation to things that are real.
I really hope that makes sense, because it’s bloody irritating when a Christian leans in with a look of pained concern on their face and says — in the middle of my doubts on whether a water-walking godman walked out of a tomb after three days of stone cold death so that Jimmy wouldn’t have to go to hell for eternity for stealing a candy wrapper (and other assorted sins) — “How’s your heart? Listen to your soul. Open yourself up to the Holy Spirit.”
What the heck does that have to do with anything? Nothing. We’re talking about something that either happened or did not happen. Please stop introducing red herrings into the conversation. Can we leave the mystical side-quests for The Legend of Zelda?
It’s not a spirit thing. It’s not a “soul” thing. It’s about something that happened or did not happen in real lifespace, that can be examined with reason and evidence, like pretty much everything else that exists in real, life existence.
What Makes I Corinthians 1:17-31 The Worst Passage In The Bible?
If someone were to ask me what I think is the worst passage in the Bible, this would be it. No question.
And that’s really saying something, because there’s a lot to choose from when it comes to the worst passage in the Bible — but this one takes the cake.
Let me apologize right off the bat — I’m sorry it’s so long. But that’s part of what makes it such a nightmare. It’s not something that can be skipped over and ignored. And in the length is just this…devastating specificity.
No, I didn’t choose any of the genocide verses in the Old Testament, or the laws on stoning, or the atrocious levity with which Moses — er, “God” — treated rape, or the really harmful ways that Jesus discussed hell. First, for most Christians these verses aren’t nearly as universal in application as 1 Corinthians 1: 17-31. And second, a significant number of Christians (though not nearly enough) are embarrassed by those verses so that they don’t have near as universal an impact — I’ve never met a Christian remotely embarrassed by the sentiments of I Corinthians 1:17-31. And third — as bad as those verses are, they don’t insulate belief as much as 1 Corinthians 1:17-31. They are the terrible inside of Christianity; I Corinthians 1:17-31 makes up the outer protective shell.
I’ll let you in on something: When I first deconverted, I thought it would be easy to get the Christians in my life to deconvert, too. Especially the fundies. It shouldn’t be that hard to convince people that we didn’t become aware of morality because naked people ate fruit at the prompting of a talking snake, or that the laws of the Old Testament were misogynistic and homophobic and transphobic nonsense, or that the genocides were the product of war-hungry tribes who needed an excuse to take over land, or that virgin births don’t happen any more often than people walking on water, or that it’s a bit absurd to think a godman waltzed out of a tomb after three days of stone cold death, or that it’s harmfully ignorant to think that hell exists for all the awesome non-Christians in the world (like yours truly).
But I was wrong. Oh, I was wrong. I mean…I could argue so that Christians could admit that I made logical sense. I could show them things that made them “uncomfortable” and that they “struggled” with. But then they usually rubber-banded back into full on Christian mode, thanks to I Corinthians 1:17-31.
It is fair to say that this passage has done more to keep Christians in my life in perpetual awe of the Bible than, I think, any other passage. The Christian’s belief in this passage has, I’ve found, made debate over every other passage in the Bible and belief in Christianity an absolute waste of time with countless Christians I’ve met. Because when you mention the horrible things in the Bible, and show them rationally that the book doesn’t make sense, they seem to inevitably use this passage (or the general sentiment they got from a preacher who used this passage) to basically say that the entire argument doesn’t matter. And worse than that, doing that makes them smugly feel more humble and holier-than-thou than you are.
And what I want to say, when that happens, is “stop pretending.” If you’re using this verse as your backup, please stop pretending that your beliefs are based on rational thought and honest examination, and state that you believe it in a vacuum or in spite of these things.
Here it is, in all its glory:
I Corinthians 1:17-31 (NIV)
17 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.19 For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
20 Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom,23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are,29 so that no one may boast before him.30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”
What Makes That So Terrible?
Right off the bat, verse 17 takes a pot shot at wisdom and eloquence. It’s like saying, “You can have intelligent, well voiced points, but that’s not what the cross of Christ is about — so your argument is invalid.” That verse and general sentiment is a wall. It doesn’t matter how well I make my point. The verse gives Christians the false license to hold up a cross and say they won the argument at any given moment. Like the kid who thinks they can claim victory at any moment by flipping the board.
Then, Verse 18 says that people who disagree with Christians are foolish and I deserve to perish. That’s really rude. I mean, I’m just saying that the Christian is wrong — I’m not making a judgment as to what they deserve (much less saying they deserve to “perish” — wow. How disrespectful). And then it gives Christians the holier-than-thou headtrip with the blatant attempt at flattery in the “us who are being saved” bit. Yeah…now they can see themselves as a superior class that can look down on me in pity for perishing (although I kinda deserve it, foolish person I am) instead of actually remotely taking seriously anything I’m saying, no matter how good my evidence and reasoning is.
For some reason, every single time a Christian talks to me about my atheism and says “I’ve been praying for you,” they seem to do it like they’re doing me a favor.
You’re not doing me a favor. You’re kinda being annoying. Because I don’t believe in prayer.
Now, that’s not to say that I can’t see that you’re praying with the best of intentions, according to you. You may think that I, someone you care about, am going to hell. And you don’t think you can do anything about it but pray, and you want me to know that you care even as we disagree. In truth, praying for me is exactly what I’d expect you to do if you really thought I was going to hell and you cared about me. If I thought what you did, I’d be begging God not to let someone I love go to hell, either.
So that’s understandable, and I feel for you. But it’s still an irritating thing for you to say.
Because when you say it, more often than not, you’re ignoring me, the flesh and blood person in front of you, who is your friend and is fine. I’m not in danger of hell. I don’t need your prayers. I am alive right now, and I feel beautiful about it.
I’m not worried about God, because the truth is that there’s no God in this interaction at all. There’s just you, and me — friends talking to each other. We don’t need the opinion of an invisible skyman messing with that.
There’s no person who needs to be saved, and I’m not going to hell. And there are reasons why I think that’s the case — pretty darn good reasons — that you could actually hear if you stopped talking to your invisible friend and starting talking and listening to ME.
When you say you’ve been praying for my heart or soul or whatever, you remind me of what our relationship could be if you dropped that baggage and realized that prayer doesn’t really mean anything. If you’re someone close to me, it might make me feel a bit bad for you, honestly, but I’m fine. I’m OK. Really. I don’t need your prayers.
Far more than I’ll ever need your prayers, I need you to listen to that. I need you to put down your folded hands. I need you to stop closing eyes in determined ignorance and actually look at me, the flesh and blood human right in front of you. I need you to quit talking to your invisible friend and start talking to your real one.
I need your friendship more than I need your prayers.
“I’m listening to you” is so much more meaningful to me than, “I’m praying for you.”
One thing that infuriates me to no end is that so many Christians think that they can get away with saying offensive things simply because the Bible says it. There’s the song and dance routine that’s all too familiar: “Oh, I’m not saying it. GOD’S saying it. It’s just the way it is.”
It’s not that I don’t get it. I’ve been a fundamentalist Christian before — enough to know that getting into a back and forth regarding what Scripture supposedly really says regarding some of the more offensive things is largely a waste of time. But what I do care about is that, regardless of how accurate your interpretation of the Bible is, you choose to worship a God who says absolutely disgusting and offensive things about me and about others I care about.
That’s not OK. It’s not cool for you to look at me and tell me I’m lost for eternity and then shrug off any negative reaction you get from that statement with, “Hey, it’s not me. It’s what God says.”
If you follow a God who would condemn me to hell for eternity, that’s an indicator that you’re being a shitty human being. I don’t care how much you say you “love” me when you say it. If you can sing and worship and dedicate your life to someone who is that much of a monster, then, frankly, I have very little respect for your sense of morality. And you don’t get off by saying “It’s God” — No. YOU made the choice to be OK with this warped sense of “justice.” Own that shit.
And shut up, those of you who say that this is not the hell all Christians believe in. I know there are all kinds of definitions of what hell is, but that does not change the fact that a hell of a lot of Christians out there worship a God who says atheists are going to hell, and try to pawn that shit on God. I mean, even if you believe that there is a God who said that, it is YOU who is making the choice to follow that God.
And for what? So that you can have your “sins washed away” and feel morally superior? So that you can go to paradise while I rot in hell? So that you can worship a God who created someone who would spend eternity in hell?
Maybe this will indicate how despicable I find that:
I do not know, but I would like to think that even if God WERE real, and even if I WERE going to hell if I didn’t obey Him, I’d give Him a big middle finger if He expected me to worship Him while condemning any of my friends to fiery torment (or eternal separation from God, or what ever the hell your particular version of hell is).
I’d like to think I’d rather fucking burn in hell for eternity than give one inch to such a monster. Because no one deserves eternity in hell, and if your God thinks that, He’s an ignorant idiot. I mean, even Hitler doesn’t deserve that. I think it’s rational to think that after 100,000 years he’d have done more than enough penance without having eternity to go.
See — that’s what bothers me. So many Christians seem so selfish and have such tunnel vision that they would, in a heartbeat, worship a God who commands all the morally bankrupt genocides and despicable laws in the Old Testament, and who seems fine with hell in the New Testament — without once asking themselves if that’s actually fair to the flesh-and-blood people in front of them.
If you choose to worship a God who has commanded genocides and says I deserve eternal hellfire, own it. Stop hiding behind the Bible as if you don’t have a choice. You do. You could leave. You choose not to.
And this goes towards individual commands, too. You can’t say, “Well, I’m against gay marriage because it’s just what the Bible says” and think that gets you off. No. Not a good enough excuse. You could still look God square in the eye and say, “Fuck you, God. I love people, I think this is beautiful, and I’m gonna love these people anyway.” I’d like to think that’s what I’d do.
None of this business about, “His ways are higher than our ways.” No. You decided to follow this God — out of the thousands of options available. You. You did this. I don’t see anyone else forcing you to do this. This is your choice, and something about this God appeals to your sensibilities. Something about you is twisted enough to worship this monster.
Ever have to deal with Christians thinking they know more about why you deconverted than you do? Here are five common things Christians say to rationalize the fact that they believe in an imaginary friend and you don’t, and some ready-made answers for you to actually rebut them and turn conversation back towards the evidence, experiences, and reasoning that are actually relevant.
1. You became an atheist because you were mad at God.
Ridiculous. Atheists aren’t mad at God, because they’re atheists, which, um, means they don’t believe God exists. However, as in the movie God’s Not Dead (reviewed well by Dan Fincke, so that you don’t have to watch the eyesore), Christians often portray atheists as angry at God despite that clearly not making any sense. I think there might be a couple reasons why.
First, they think that if they can portray you as mad at God, that would be proof of God’s existence. But this isn’t true, because you can be mad at something that doesn’t exist. For example, there are stories of people being catfished – or, in other words, falling in love with a made-up profile online. Later they find out it’s fake. Here, they may be angry at someone that they know does not exist for not existing. To say that this anger means that they think the fake profile is portraying a real person is ludicrous – in fact, the fact it DOESN’T portray a real person is the reason for their anger.
Second, there are many atheists who leave Christianity angry at the concept of God, and there are many who leave Christianity indifferent towards the concept of God. But, for the angry ones, it’s the CONCEPT they are angry at. God Himself doesn’t exist. So it’s not really relevant for you to conflate the two. In any case – quibbling over whether the person is angry at the concept of God doesn’t say anything about whether God exists or not. It’s a red herring.
Third, often people are angry at the things people do in the name of God. Here, the fact that they don’t believe in God fuels their anger at the actions of people who do. When Christians rail against, say, Gay Marriage or spout the conviction that if you don’t believe in God, you’re going to hell (thus besmirching your reputation), anger happens because of PEOPLE, not because of a belief in God.
2. You left Christianity because you wanted to sin
If God is the only one who determines what is sin (as is the case in most common Christian theology), then this statement doesn’t make sense, because I don’t believe in God. But when I say that, Christians tend to respond, “Yeah, but you’re still doing things that you wouldn’t be able to do if you followed the Bible — isn’t that convenient?” Which is clearly a ridiculous sentiment.
It’s as if I told you that the great and almighty Jack told you not to eat anymore, but Jack was clearly just my imaginary friend. Sure, you want to eat. And no, you don’t believe in Jack. But that doesn’t mean I can then come in while you’re downing a burger and say, “Aha! You’re eating the burger, so CLEARLY you like eating and aren’t willing to give it up – which proves that the only reason you don’t believe in Jack is because you want to eat.”
[youtube]https://youtu.be/QX7N58df0j0[/youtube]
Ridiculous, isn’t it? But the analogy in real life doesn’t stop there, oftentimes.
Suppose I socially ostracized you for eating when Jack told you not to eat. I could tell you how much you let Jack and, by extension, your family and most of your friends down by eating when Jack told you not to eat. And I could associate all the guilt and the shame from this ostracization and people I say you’re hurting with the word “sin” until, under the pressure of the psychological game (if I’m good at it) I get you to beg me for forgiveness – and, by extension, beg Jack for forgiveness. And then you can be in our good graces…as long as you try really, really, really hard not to eat.
And meanwhile, I’m eating a bit myself, here and there, and when you ask me why I eat and you can’t, I say, “Yeah, I know eating is wrong. I feel really bad about it. But then I ask Jack for forgiveness, and He forgives me! So that makes everything OK and means I don’t have to feel bad anymore. But because my imaginary friend Jack hasn’t been accepted into your heart, you can’t do that, and you deserve to burn in hell forever every time you bite into a burger — or bite into anything else, for that matter.”
That’s no way to treat a friend, is it? Wouldn’t the more relevant thing, rather than social and guilt-infused manipulation, be to actually PROVE that Jack exists and admit there wasn’t good evidence that he existed if there wasn’t? So – replace “eating” with “sin” and “Jack” with “God,” and you have the picture here.
3. You didn’t read enough apologetics — so you gave up on Christianity too easily.
You don’t have to read all the literature of a viewpoint (yes, even the one-sided atrocity The Case For Christ — which has been recommended to me around a zillion times)to know that it is wrong. Think about the other religions. Christians, have you read the apologetics available for EVERY religion in the world? No? I’ll guess why: Perhaps you want to investigate further the route that has the most success. Well, that desire to keep investigating what seems the best path doesn’t stop after you find that the best path isn’t Christianity. It keeps going – and you keep researching and reading in the general directions that seem to provide the best results, given your relatively short time on earth. If you’re going to convince us, defend your religion, with the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection and the Water turning into Wine and so on, in a rational manner instead of assuming you can find it somewhere. And then you can present it.
4. You had bad parents, and you left because they ruined your view of God.
This one has a bit of history — it originated with a guy named Paul Vitz in 1999, who claimed, based on his look at 20 famous atheists in history who had, according to his analysis, fathers who had abandoned him or who were “weak”, that atheists tended to be children of “weak” or absent parents. The glaring problem here is that he hand-picked 20 atheists. To say that this is not a representative sample of the millions of atheists is to make such an obvious statement that it’s almost embarrassing to state it.
And on top of that, even if it WERE true (which, in many cases, it is clearly not), it’s irrelevant. What if you believe in God simply because you have “good” parents (whatever that means)? Someone could easily say that, because you had such an awesome childhood, you can’t see a realistic picture of the world through your spoiled, rose-colored glasses. I mean, two can play at the game of accusing the other that they just believe what they happened to believe because of the way they were raised.
In short, this argument is clearly a meaningless waste of time, and should be skipped to get to a more honest, evidence-based discussion concerning whether or not God exists, not an attempt to use whatever was less than rosy in your childhood to manipulate you into believing in God.
5. You left because your church community didn’t love you enough.
First of all, the most loving thing the church could do, honestly, is do away with imaginary beings to leave even more room to indiscriminately care more about real, actual flesh and blood people. So if God is imaginary – do away with Him if He gets in the way of treating someone who has found out He doesn’t exist with dignity and respect if you really care about him.
Second – oftentimes, churches actually use kindness to get people in the church. If people’s kindness is a good reason for someone to come to church and worship God, then it seems clear that people’s rudeness might be a good reason for someone to stop coming to church and stop worshipping God – it’s important here to be consistent.
And third, this is not an argument about the existence of God. It does nothing to prove that God exists; it just, at the most, states that someone had an unpleasant experience at church. And besides, if Christianity is based on assumptions that aren’t true, wouldn’t it make sense for some people to have unpleasant experiences when they tried to live lives using these assumptions?
Honorable Mention: You were never a true Christian.
I didn’t include this one because, technically speaking, the person stating this is saying you were never a Christian to begin with, and thus did not deconvert. This is an example of the “No True Scotsman” argument. The simple fact is that, by itself, this does not explain anything. Why was the person not a true Christian? To answer this question, we need something we can examine. We cannot examine someone’s “soul” or “heart.” Give me tangible evidence.
Usually Christians respond in one or more of the five ways already discussed. They’ll say you did not have the right relationship with God (correlates with the “mad at God” part), that you wanted to sin (correlates with the next reason), that you were lacking in knowledge (didn’t read enough apologetics), that you were taught the “wrong” Christianity when younger (bad parents), or that you were more focused on the church than on God (correlates with leaving because the church community didn’t love you enough). So…yeah. This frequently seems little more than a hub that, once you scratch the surface, takes you to one of the five other reasons.
