A Topic for Discussion
Today is one of those days that you read this post if you have *plenty* of time on your hands.
I feel like I didn’t adequately describe my last post. I don’t know what possessed me to write in such a different way. I can honestly say that was a reflection of me. None of those vignettes were specifically about ME but were, rather, my reflections about different personal situations I encountered over Spring Break/Easter holidays. Upon reflection, I find it interesting that I went from third person to first person. I don’t really know why I did that other than to hypothesize that I moved from observer to putting myself in each person’s situation. One thing I will say is that although *I* know who each of those situations is about, most people who ventured a guess were wrong. They often saw themselves in one of the vignettes where I was thinking of a separate situation entirely. In fact, Cheyenne’s comment made me realize that those struggles…the thoughts I, myself, personalized…are pretty much a part of the human condition. We may not all go through each of those specific scenarios but we can at least relate.
In any event, one of the themes I wrote about was the struggle to figure out our personal faith or belief system…if we have one…if we need one…etc. I recognize that this is something entirely out of character for me as I feel that religion (or lack thereof) is truly very personal. BUT, I think often, especially in the South, the questioning of the common religion around here, Christianity, is taboo. The question isn’t “Do you attend church?”, it’s, “Where do you attend church?” This implies that if you doubt or are struggling with your beliefs than you are wrong…an outcast…or somehow lesser when, in fact, I believe most people struggle with these issues. In fact, Cheyenne reminded me (when I was discussing this very subject with her yesterday) that I once questioned her…”If you believe what you believe because you learned it or ‘got it’ from your parents, is that truly believing…is that true faith?” In any event, it seemed somewhat preordained that I would receive this document in my inbox from a reader who said that I could post it or not. I decided that, although it is lengthy and out of character for me, it is a discussion worth exploring. I made the choice to post it anonymously mostly because I think it is probably a pretty common experience. But please remember that there is a person behind this writing. So careful, thoughtful and respectful commenting is warranted. That being said, I do want to encourage a discussion here. You are more than welcome to post anonymously or send them to me to post anonymously.
Other than that, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the musings of someone obviously far above me, intellectually-speaking.
Religion
Religion has become a big problem for me lately. I think it is because I was raised as a charismatic, fundamentalist Christian who later married someone from a Mormon family, as well as having the nature of a “doubting Thomas,” that have converged to strip me of my religious beliefs (so far as I’ve come to date).
When I was in my teens and early twenties I questioned the things I had been taught to believe, but allowed my awe and emotions, as well as the thoughts and justifications of Christian apologists to give me reason enough to hold onto my faith. When Mike and I were dating, I at first considered Mormonism to be the cult that I had always been told that it was, with laughable beliefs (drinking tea and coffee are sins, haha, no really!, among others). I knew that many of their beliefs were contradictory to the Bible, and I had a fairly good upbringing and knowledge of the Bible to have “red flags” pop up at many things. Later, in the year or so before Mike and I married, and also in the few months after we married, I began to try to see things from the viewpoint of those who did believe. What if Joseph Smith really was a holy prophet of God, and not a manipulative and controlling liar? I really loved and respected Mike and his family, so I wanted to be thorough in my examination of their religion, and not just basing my opinions on preconceived biases. I thought how wonderful it would be to be part of this community, with detailed explanations of most everything, and how thrilled his family would be. I also thought of how disappointed my family would be because they would think that I had given up the truth for an obvious cult, and therefore would be going to Hell. However, I decided that I really needed to look into it all for myself and not let others’ opinions make my decision for me. I agreed to meet with the local Mormon missionaries and go through their “discussions” (six of them, I think). They were really nice young guys and sort-of became friends of the family (us and the in-laws). I’ve actually really liked all of the missionaries I’ve ever gotten to know, and readily identified with their passion and security in their faith. Anyway, through the six discussions I had many questions that they had no answer for, and we all did much studying. At the end, I concluded that there were too many holes, convolutions, and Biblical contradictions for me to be able to believe that Mormonism was the true religion. (Unbeknownst to me, Mike was having serious doubts about Mormonism at the time as well).
The Mormon’s test to know whether the Book of Mormon (BofM) is true is to read it, then pray about it, and God will give you a feeling, a “burning in the bosom” to tell you it’s true. I always thought that that was a totally ridiculous test of truth (it’s subjective, not objective). Another laughable line (though I’m not positive whether this is doctrine or just a belief) was that because the teachings in the BofM and the religion in general make you feel good then it’s from God (because it’s good and happy), but that because doubts make you feel bad, they’re from the Devil. Really? Anyway, I once told Mike that no matter what I did, if I didn’t conclude that Mormonism was true that in any believer’s eyes it would be my own fault, and not because the reasonable conclusion was that it was false. If I truly prayed hard enough, etc. God would show me that it was true. I would be refusing God out of my own sinfulness, pride, arrogance, etc. He understood my dilemma, that “no” was not a true or acceptable answer.
Though both of our dads counciled against our marriage on the basis of differing religions (being “unequally yoked”), which is a legitimate concern considering the strife that can arise in a marriage due to that reason, to their credit both of our families have treated us and the in-laws with love and acceptance. Though both of our families (at least the religious ones) are devout and advocate their beliefs, they’ve never really pushed them on us, and have let us figure things out on our own. Right now, I think everyone’s understanding is that Mike has doubts about his faith and has remained undecided without really rejecting anything outright, and I have pretty much kept the faith I was raised in, joining a Baptist church a couple of years ago (though I wasn’t raised Baptist, my extended family are mostly all Baptists). Up until fairly recently I think this was pretty accurate.
A few years ago, I found a website called Recovery from Mormonism (exmormon.org) that was comprised of people who had left Mormonism because they had made the same discoveries that I had as well as many more. For a while I was fascinated with the stories and information on RfM. The people posting on this site had left Mormonism, but had moved on to a variety of other religious beliefs, or no belief at all. There were also links to information about how and why people believe in cults, how the logic is faulty and circular, and how they are then emotionally imprisoned in the cult due to the social ties they form, the thought control, and the severe spiritual consequences they are told will result if they leave the cult. I found all of the information true to my understanding of Mormonism, but disturbingly also true of Christianity in general. The tests they used to determine if something was a cult (also used by many Christian groups, ironically enough) also indicted Christianity if one is honest enough to apply it. I was disturbed, but not ready to give up my faith at that point, so I let it alone for the time-being.
One thing that I have noticed among Christians and Mormons alike is the sameness of their faith. Not the substance of their beliefs, but the expression of their personal faith. They each reject the other’s position and conclusion, yet I have met so many Mormons who are mirror images of charismatic Christians in the expressions of their faith, whether praising God for something, deciding who to date, condemning those outside of their belief systems, etc. If you didn’t know who was who, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart, and I would have thought them all “spirit filled.”
Growing up, “spirit filled” Christians, who claimed to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, were the only true Christians there were. Contemporary praise and worship, and displaying fruits of the spirit (normal things as well as laying on of hands, speaking in tongues, being slain in the spirit, etc.) were all important in knowing if God was present and moving in a congregation (raising your hands during the music was also encouraged). Other churches that were more liturgical were “dead” and did not have the Holy Spirit in evidence.
After I got married, I went to different churches trying to find one that was what I thought a church should be, but that wasn’t too over the top, as I knew Mike would never accept a really “holy roller” church. Of course, he had been raised to scoff at other “hypocritical” churches, and Evangelical, “holy rollers” were especially disdained. I really wanted us to be able to reconcile our faiths as I knew one day we’d have children and I wanted to raise them as Christians, and of course wanted us all to go to Heaven one day. Mike told me one time that if the BofM wasn’t true, he wasn’t sure if any religion was true. I knew that in many ways the way he thought about things (his prejudices against other faiths among other things) was intentionally ingrained by the Mormon church. (I also realized that that’s true about pretty much everybody as adherents always want to promote their beliefs as superior to other beliefs). I wanted to be able to convince him not to throw Baby Jesus out with the bathwater, as the flaws in his religion didn’t necessarily make the Bible untrue. I thought about all of these things for a long time. I eventually decided that a more traditional church setting would be the best compromise for the both of us. I didn’t really believe that any one denomination had it exactly right. The Bible is open to a certain amount of interpretation and most things are not deal breakers. Since the Bible states that a person is “saved by grace through faith” I determined that faith is a personal thing and only God can be the judge of who has faith and who doesn’t. I decided that worship styles and the types of church service that a person prefers are pretty much a cultural thing and a personal preference. As long as the teachings of a church were doctrinally sound, then I felt you could pick whichever suited you best. I went to one church in particular a few times and decided that it was a pretty good fit. It had pews and traditional hymns that were far more like Mike’s previous churches than mine, but the choir was awesome, and the pastor was very personable, had a good preaching style, and I agreed with most of what he said. I thought that this was a church I could feel good about, and that Mike would approve of and be most likely to attend with me if he ever made the decision to give Christianity another shot. He went with me on various occasions and agreed that he liked this church much better. I decided to join the church, and was baptized, and began attending pretty regularly.
Nothing specific has happened for me to point to as the reason that I became dissatisfied with my faith. I think it was many things simmering over a long period of time that have bothered me. I decided that I couldn’t have a true faith if I didn’t have a solid foundation for that faith. I couldn’t say that Mormonism or any other religion was wrong and I was right if I had no basis for that statement, and the Bible teaches that Jesus is the only way to God. I felt confident in debunking Mormonism based on the Bible, but why did I determine that the Bible was true, other than I was taught to believe that it was? I read some Christian apologetic books, and looked at some websites. One explanation for Christianity over other religions is that others religions (like Buddhism, for one) require that you continually work toward perfection and that eventually you will reach perfection (over several lives, or whatever) and therefore God, or the equivalent. Christianity teaches that since the fall of Adam, we have inherited sin (imperfection) and that no one can be perfect, that we’re always messing up in some way, which seems to be true from experience. Since God is perfect, we can never reach him because we can never be perfect, so he sent his son to bridge the gap by being a perfect man and then paying for our sins. Because we were all born in sin due to one man’s (Adam’s) action, we can all be redeemed through one man’s paying the penalty of that sin. So it all equals out, but it’s our choice. Basically, because we can see that it’s true that humans will never make it to God on our own, and Christianity answers that dilemma by sending God to us, therefore, it makes sense that this would be the true religion. I accepted that explanation as a good one for Christianity over other religions (though how much of the way I thought/think is based on where I was born and how I was raised to think? It will probably never be known.) So far I felt pretty secure in my faith.
One of the things that still bothered me now and then was that ever since taking a college biology class, I’ve been pondering evolution. I decided that micro-evolution is a fact, as can be determined scientifically pretty obviously, but that it doesn’t mean that macro-evolution is necessarily a fact. I figured that given enough time I could see how things really could evolve, but if God made the world as the Bible stated he did, and if scientific dating techniques were faulty, etc. then I would have enough reasonable doubt to believe that even with the fossil record, and other sciences seeming to back up these ideas, that Creationism is a legitimate belief to hold. I knew that I couldn’t believe in the Bible and evolution because if Adam and Eve didn’t really exist, then there was no such thing as original sin. If original sin wasn’t real, then Jesus couldn’t correct Adam’s mistake, and therefore none of it makes sense. Also, if we can’t trust all the Bible stories to be true (unless they are specifically stated to be a parable) then how do we determine what to believe from the Bible, and how can we say it’s the inspired Word of God? I started looking on the internet at Christian defenses to these beliefs. One of the local Christian radio stations often plays clips from a group called “Answers in Genesis,” which defends the Biblical account of creation. I went to their website and read many of the articles on there. I did searches on some of the topics brought up, and generally looked up whatever things I could think of. I became discouraged by the lack of real science and by how unconvincing the evidence and explanations for the Christian side was. I just really had a hard time buying it. This was really the first thing that made me think that I really don’t know if I still believe Christianity to be true.
There is the argument for a Creator in that nobody knows how the universe came into being, or other universes, etc. The probability of us being here now is some crazy number to one. That along with complexity and several other factors (mathematics, laws of the universe, etc), argue for the existence of a higher intelligence orchestrating these things. Maybe so, maybe not, it’s all speculation and no one knows for sure. Christians believe that this is enough evidence to believe in God, and therefore, if a God exists who is powerful enough to create the universe, He could do everything the Bible says He did. If so, then of course He could, but any religion can say the same thing, and who’s the one to say which is correct?
So, now I think I’m to the point of listing Why I want Christianity to be true, and Why I really don’t think it is.
Why I want Christianity to be true (and/or why if it is true I want to know that it is):
· I was born and raised as a Christian. It is my culture and the belief system of most of my family and friends and the primary belief system of the society around me (can you say “Bible Belt?”). I want to be a part of that group.
· If Christianity is true, and I’m wrong in not believing it, I’ll go to Hell. Hell is the scariest and most terrible place anyone can imagine, and I certainly (understatement!) don’t want to go there. Nor do I want anyone else to go there.
· I want Heaven to be a real place. I want to know that those who have died are not gone, but that we all can live together in a perfect, beautiful, and wondrous place without ever growing old or having anything bad happen.
· I want to be perfectly and unconditionally loved by God.
· I want to know that everything will be made right in the end. All of the horrible, evil, sad, unfair, and wrong things that can never be changed in this world will be made right in the afterlife.
· I want to have a guidebook for life. I want there to be an absolute right and wrong, black and white, so that it’s not up to me or anyone else to decide, but is decreed by a perfect being. It is much harder to have to weigh everything yourself.
· I want to believe that God is in control of everything. I want to be able to pray to him and know that he can make things better, and that if he doesn’t it’s because he has a greater plan in mind.
Why I don’t think it is:
· The science doesn’t really add up. You can make it fit, and you can explain away pretty much anything if you assume at the beginning that there is a God who can do whatever he wants, but it’s not really the logical conclusion.
· I can’t reconcile a perfect and loving God who reveals himself in such an uncertain and ambiguous way, yet punishes you in Hell if you don’t come to the right conclusion.
· How can you truly have free will if the choices are God or Hell? What logical person would choose to be tormented for eternity if they knew those were their options? It’s kind of like someone holding a gun to your head and threatening to shoot you if you don’t do what they say. Of course you’re going to do what they say. You have no way of determining if they will actually pull the trigger or not. Is that how God acts?
· The origins and compilation of the Bible. It could be God directed (if you assume such things), but there is lots of evidence that it was compiled and edited by hundreds of people over hundreds of years, originating in oral tradition, and not likely to be infallible. Also, the contradictions within the Bible itself.
· Also, something curious to me, though it’s not really the same as the other things I’ve listed, but may have been an underlying theme for the writer: In Genesis you have Adam and Eve and God. The moral of the story is that the Good Choice is to unquestioningly love and obey God because he’s your creator and he tells you that he’s good and wants the best for you. The Bad Choice is to seek knowledge. That pisses God off and earns you death. So logically, blind faith is the good choice, and seeking understanding for the world around you is bad. Did God not give us a mind for a reason?
· There are several other problems such as the problem of evil/suffering that I’ve read about since, but were not ones that I originally came up with myself.
Here’s another thought:
You either have to believe in infinity or that something was created from nothing. Either option is mind-boggling and raises unanswerable questions. If you believe in infinity, I can think of two possibilities (though I’m sure there are many more I haven’t considered). One, there is an infinite Creator who created everything. Two, Chance created everything. As I said, there’s some statistic out there that says that life as we know it is “balanced on the edge of a knife” and that the chance of life as we know it occurring without a creator is some astronomical number to one. But, if there is if there is an infinity of possible occurrences, then the statistic is meaningless because one of those chances will be the one we have. Just like in an infinite number line, one of the numbers will be 89584573447589 (random typing there). As an analogy put it, it’s like winning the cosmic lottery. The chances of winning are slim, but someone’s going to win. I looked it up, and of course, I’m not the first person to have this idea. As I read up on the theories, I realized that I was getting into Quantum Mechanics, and sci-fi related ideas, and also way over my head! I don’t have the math/science background to have any idea what some of these articles were talking about. An interesting thought I came across was that in choosing between the likelihood of infinite universes and an infinite God, we have concrete proof of the existence of one universe, so we know universes can exist, but we have no proof at all of God, so that makes the first more likely to be true than the latter.
In my opinion, all of those ideas seem so “out there” that any of them is hard to believe. I don’t know that I believe that there are infinite universes rather than an intelligent creator, or that everything came out of nothing. I guess my point is that if God exists, how can he possibly condemn people for not being able to conclusively figure it all out?
Finally, to just throw one last thing in there, I’ve come across Occam’s Razor, which is a principle that (copying straight from Wikipedia) “states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. When multiple competing hypotheses are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities. It is in this sense that Occam’s razor is usually understood.”
After “debunking” Mormonism through the RfM site, I wondered if there were debunking Christianity sites. Obviously there are people who have left Christianity and need support in deprogramming themselves. Turns out there are, and one that I especially like is called, appropriately, Debunking Christianity (debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com). It’s run by a guy named John W. Loftus, who used to be an Evangelical pastor, but after doing research to further ground his faith, he realized that the evidence toppled it. He wrote a book called Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity. I ordered the book and am looking forward to understanding the arguments better than just the online synopses of the arguments. My sister recently told me that she and her husband now believe in evolution (which was a big shock coming from her!) due to a book that they bought written by Francis S. Collins, the lead scientist of the Human Genome Project. He’s a Christian, and talks about science and his faith in his book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. I’ll have to borrow it from her and see what he has to say as well, though from critiques I’ve read, it seems that he made a pretty big leap from “there’s evidence for a Creator” to “the God of the Bible is true and Jesus Christ is his son.” I don’t want to judge from other’s statements, though, so I’ll read up for myself.
Choices and Implications:
There are many choices and implications from this train of thought.
Choices:
· I can choose to disregard all of my questions and doubts and continue in my Christian faith. The faith would give me a feeling of peace and security (see points on Why I want to believe). I would be hedging my bets and avoiding Hell, just in case it is true.
· I can look into more liberal forms of Christianity or just cherry pick the things that I like and not worry about the rest.
· I could investigate other religions, or take a Theist stance that there are elements of truth in all religions (Universalist Unitarian, etc.).
· I could choose deism (there’s a creator but he/she/it is not involved in man’s affairs), agnosticism (there’s no way to know if God exists), or atheism (denial of any God).
Out of all the options, I think the fourth one is the most honest. I have to admit that my upbringing has heavily prejudiced me against other religions. As a Christian I would have cried “foul” at someone deconverting from another faith and then lumping them all together and declaring all false. I would have said that just because your religion is wrong doesn’t mean mine is. But now, with the shoe on the other foot, there are thousands of religions out there, and I don’t have the time, energy, or willpower to look into them. I also don’t want to free myself from the trappings of one only to rename it and bind myself to another. I don’t really think it matters much whether I pick deism, agnosticism, or atheism if there’s no personal God anyway. I guess agnosticism is the most neutral and least stigmatized form to take.
Implications:
Mike has accused me of being obsessed with this topic over the last week. He’s right, partly because being on spring break has allowed me the time to think over it without other obligations going on, and partly because I feel the need to be as informed as possible and to have sat down and laid out my thoughts because there are important implications to whatever decision I make.
· Just because I feel my conclusions to be true, doesn’t mean I have to like it. The promises of Christianity are wonderful, and of course I’d like to partake in them. I can’t, however, make myself believe in something that causes so much cognitive dissonance for me. You can’t un-ring a bell, as the saying goes. I think I will mourn the loss of my faith for a while, like I would mourn someone who died. It is a loss, even if it’s only in my mind.
· There are things that are much easier to explain or enforce if you can make God the arbiter. Some accuse that there is no standard for morality if there is no God. I agree that it does make things more complicated, but I do think we have an innate (probably evolved for the survival of the species) sense of morality. If God doesn’t exist, that means we made up the moral laws that we attribute to God, so we do recognize right from wrong. Secular morality requires people to be more thoughtful about why something is right or wrong, not relying on “because God said so.”
· Related to the last point, I still pretty much hold the same values as I did as a Christian person, especially following the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you), but need to think more carefully about the “because God said so” ones. Homosexuality is one of the things that occur to me off the top of my head, but there are others as well.
· I think it will be more challenging to live life and raise children because I’m not handed the guidebook, I actually have to think and figure out things for myself. But, maybe that’s the answer in itself—think for yourself and teach your children to think for themselves.
· If God doesn’t have a plan for everything, then we have more responsibility to take care of things. I don’t think one person can or should take on every problem on earth, but we can’t be self-centered and not care about anything. We can’t say “Don’t worry about polluting the earth and using up all its resources because God is going to come back before we totally destroy it anyway,” or “I will pray for xyz (the poor, sick, starving, AIDS, etc., injustice) and God will make it up in the end.” Not that I’m saying all or most religious people do that, it’s just that you can assuage your conscience a little bit that way. If we realize that it’s up to people to make changes or it’s never going to happen then we realize the importance of taking action on some of those things, or supporting others who do.
· I think that religions began with our ancestors as we became evolved enough to think about such things. I think we are curious beings that are always searching for understanding, and that our understanding evolves as we evolve. I think religion was primitive and unorganized to begin with, but that as different cultures formed, the religions formed with them and that the religion influenced the culture and the culture influenced the religion. I think that as religion became more organized, those in power used religion to back up their claims to power and incorporated fear into the religion as a means of controlling people and keeping them in line.
· I think personal spirituality and faith can be an enormously good thing for individuals, but I think that the aspects of “us versus them”, the fear, punishment, damnation, etc. that keeps people clinging to their brand of faith as opposed to others can be extremely destructive. Look at all of the religious wars throughout history that have gone on and that continue to go on. The acts of terrorism and the other atrocities that are committed in the name of God that are still going on are quite scary. The fact that there are so many major religions that are at odds with each other, and that there are so many adherents that influence the actions of their nations is a sobering thought. We do have the capability of blowing up the planet if serious religious wars broke out.
· I am torn between the good or benign qualities and the bad. I think that the best option is generally to keep my beliefs to myself unless asked, but do I have a responsibility to stand against religious views when they are intolerant, or harmful to others?
· I also believe that life is a process of growth and maturity (hopefully!), and that as I continue to ponder and learn that my beliefs will grow and change. I don’t think my ideas are now fixed in stone, and I know I can’t state that “there’s no way I’ll ever believe differently than I do now.” I used to think that.
· I don’t believe that ignorance is a justifiable position. I will hold a belief as long as I can make sense of it, but if new evidence comes to light, I will be willing to change my mind to come to a better understanding. I do realize that there are arguments above my head and things beyond my understanding, but I’ve got to do the best I can with the intellect that I’ve got. I think that that’s the most you can ask of anyone. I don’t reject the assertion that sometimes you have to make a leap of faith, I just think that you can’t leap if you’re not standing on something solid to leap from. And I think it’s wrong to tell someone that something bad is going to happen to them and cause them psychological suffering if you don’t have a defensible reason for saying so. It’s sort of like yelling “Fire” in a crowded building. If there really is a fire, then you’re saving lives, but if the fire’s only in your head, you’re creating panic and people can get hurt.