Raf

I submit that part of what you're missing with this excellent, respectful question actually seeking an honest response without a hint of being judgmental or dismissive is that the process is not an immediate or instantaneous one. Personal experience of the miraculous. Honestly, I think we call things miracles when they're not. We call our intuition Revelation when it's not. Most of the "personal experiences with the miraculous" I had easily and neatly fall into the category of "you know, coincidence explains that just as easily as divine intervention." A few fall into the "you know the other person involved was lying, right?" Some of it was "you made that up" and "there is a mountain of evidence contradicting that claim and zero evidence supporting it." What was left, for me, are stories OTHER people told. And I honestly respect their integrity. But I don't believe there was anything supernatural at work. No matter how cold it was (who has ears to hear). I remember thinking at ROA 89 that LCM had bugged the RV we had rented for the week, because there he was on stage every night addressing something we were discussing in private hours earlier. He must have bugged us! And, admittedly, he easily could have. BUT: isn't the more likely explanation that hundreds of people, maybe even thousands, at ROA 1989 were all talking about and thinking about the same controversy that had just decimated the ministry? Did he really need to bug a bunch of nobodies from New York (and Texas) to find out what our complaints and arguments were? A few months back, Mike posted a thread trying to explain the "paucity" of miracles. It was a stunning admission right there in the title of the thread. Folks had to argue whether the evidence really supported a "paucity" of miracles. I just sat there thinking, "finally, someone admits it." ... On a semi-related front, if ANYONE on GSC has cause to think I am biased against his religious beliefs, it's got to be Mike. The utter contempt I had for him as a human being cannot be overstated. I often joke that half of GSC's rules were developed to combat the ways I talked to and about Mike. My personal favorite is we can no longer distort the person's screen name for comedic effect. That's because I used to call him "Smikeol," like he was Gollum from Lord of the Rings protecting his precious PFAL. Ah, the good old days. One thing I have noticed about Mike though: he follows the GSC rules. He may annoy [some of] us [more than others], but he knows the difference between arguing his position and arguing against people. I respect that. And my comments on his thread would have absolutely derailed the conversation you all were having in Doctrinal (which is to say, "of course there's a paucity of miracles; there's no God to perform them!') So I had to start a parallel thread here in the atheist subforum OUT OF RESPECT FOR THE CHRISTIANS WHO HAD EVERY RIGHT TO DISCUSS THEIR FAITH WITHOUT MY INTERFERENCE. And I bring it up now because Oldiesman, your question was the best example I've seen in a long time of conducting a respectful inquiry despite holding a [presumably] polar opposite point of view from the people of whom you are inquiring. So thank you for that.

Stephen Hawking had ALS for 55 years. Augie Nieto had it for 18. The average life expectancy after diagnosis is two to 5 years. My sister lived four years and 11 months after diagnosis. So Hawking, the atheist, outlives the majority of Christians praying for a miracle by a factor of anywhere between three and 11, if we're being charitable. I know, that's a MEAN thing to say. And no one wants to hear it. But it also unfairly singles out one person's experience and tries to make an example of it. The MUCH more fair thing to do is recognize that regardless of faith, an ALS diagnosis is more often than not a death sentence with an execution date within two to five years. It doesn't care what you believe or how much "faith" you put in science. It's there to kill you, period. But what about the exceptions? They're exceptions. Statistics tells you to expect them. My sister's ALS was not God's fault. Stephen Hawking's ALS was not God's way of giving a prominent atheist as much time as divinely possible to change his mind and see the light. How do I know this? Because I literally just made that up! This idea of clinging to the possible as likely just because it hasn't been ruled out is not an honest approach to the facts. I suspect the reason some Christians think atheists are angry at God is that they recognize, if they were in our shoes, that they would be angry at Him (too, from their perspective). And I could see where that would make sense. Dozens of GSers prayed for my sister and contributed to ALS research on her behalf (THANK YOU ALL AGAIN FOR THAT). Did God just not give a flip? Too busy keeping the evangelical atheist scientist alive to give a sick nobody one or two more years of a quality life before she watches herself deteriorate painfully with the knowledge that eventually she will basically drown in her own saliva? Hell, I would be mad at Him too! But it's not his fault for the same reason it's not Allah's fault it's not Zeus' fault it's not Odin's fault it's not Horus' fault it's not Joe Pesci's fault. None of those guys exist. Well, maybe the last guy, but I'm half convinced he's a fictional character being played publicly by an amazing actor. My son has autism because he was born with a brain that misfires in the area of communication. Happens to a lot of people. Happened to my kid. Would have happened if I never believed in God. Would have happened if I were the right reverend so-and-so. It does.not.care.about.my.religious.beliefs. That's kind of the sad part about realizing you're atheist. You can't pray for people anymore, and let me tell you, that hurts. Because we WANT to do SOMETHING. "I'll pray for you." It sounds like something. And to the person praying, it is. But as it's written in James, if I'm hungry, and you say "I'll pray for you," um. Thanks, but you haven't flipping fed me. I think that's in James. I give a lot more as an atheist. Not to churches, but to real causes. Like clean water. Medical research. Feeding programs. Journalism associations. First Amendment defenders. I could pray for them, but that would not pay a single bill. I foster kids. I could pray for them, but that wouldn't rescue them from an abusive home, comfort them when they're having nightmares. Feed them. Play with them. Teach them. Clothe them. Take them to their first baseball game or swimming pool. People need to do that.

There you go reading what's written and letting the book speak for itself. So arrogant. :) So my adaptation of Jonah gets nothing?

Yeah I realized. Well at least it's a source. Now what's HIS source?

P. 127 of what?

Wait until you guys start getting into Yahweh and the Pantheon of Canaanite gods!

It was. Thanks.

Let's not confuse TWI with Christianity. In my experience, cults are far more interested in combatting demonic activity than the average Christian is. In my experience, Christians just want to live their lives and respect their beliefs. Cults? Cults want you to be afraid of every demon or devil lurking behind every corner, en garde! ready to fight at a moment's notice. It's EASY to let extremism paint all of religion, just like it's easy to let nihilism define atheism. They're not the same thing, but how do you resist the temptation to conclude If A, Then N? Especially when you add time to the equation, when it becomes increasingly justified. An atheist NOW may not be a nihilist, but ask him what he thinks of everything 6 billion years from now, and the opinion of an atheist will be indistinguishable from that of a nihilist. But the point is most of us are not nihilists NOW. Atheists do not reject moral principles and we don't consider life meaningless. There is much meaning in life. In fact, this being the only life we have, we treasure life. That's why you don't see atheist suicide bombers. No one's promising us 72 science textbooks if we sacrifice ourselves for Darwin. You'll never see us flying a plane into a building while shouting "REASON!!!!!!" until the last second. Defining a group by the actions or beliefs of its extremists is usually not fair at all. Muslims suffer some of the worst prejudice for this. Atheists too. Christians, not so much. There are so many Christians that most people recognize "that's not all of us" when they're criticizing one religious group. JW's have the blood transfusion ban, not Christianity. Westboro Baptist teaches God Hates F*gs, not the average Christjan. But that's part of what makes it so challenging to discuss some of these issues. No matter what belief Charity deconstructs as part of her journey, there will always be some branch of Christianity somewhere that says Or So now, while Charity tries to make sense of what Christianity teaches and whether/why she rejects it, she suddenly becomes compelled to evaluate and reject every alternative interpretation of Christianity before being permitted the luxury of saying, "You know, I think none of it is true." Well that's preposterous. There are 45,000 Christian denominations on earth today. 45 THOUSAND. The OVERHWELMING MAJORITY of Christians and Jews, throughout all of time, believe that Genesis 22 records God telling Abraham to kill his son as a test. When the angel stops Abraham, at no point is there a "correction." The angel SAYS: The angel does NOT say: "Stop! You TOTALLY misunderstood what God asked you to do. He wasn't asking you to kill your son. Are you crazy?" And the Bible later says Abraham BELIEVED God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness. It doesn't say "Abraham misunderstood God, but in doing so he demonstrated a faith that impressed the Almighty." I do not know if Wierwille was alone in teaching that the burnt offering meant something other than what Abraham took it to mean. I do know that he cited no sources in making this claim. Where is he getting this information? He doesn't say. And I may not have delved into the practice with all the resources and time of a scholar, but I am not finding a scrap of support for Wierwille's sentence quoted above. If anyone can find a scholarly source, not Wierwille, to indicate that God might have meant something else when he said "offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I will tell you," I would be glad to see it. But absent any other evidence, the only source for this claim is Wierwille. The verse and context are clear: God was testing Abraham when He asked him to kill his son. And Abraham passed the test. The angel didn't intervene to correct Abraham. The angel intervened because IT WAS A TEST and IT WAS OVER. Did God really want Isaac to die? No. If He did, He would have let Abraham go through with it. Did God tell Abraham to kill Isaac? Yes. He was testing Abraham. He says so. But doesn't the Bible say God does not tempt? Yes. A thousand or two years after the Abraham incident, God says he does not tempt people with evil. But obedience to God is not evil. Trusting God to fulfill His promises is not evil. Abraham passed the test because he trusted God, not because he misunderstood Him. Let the Bible speak for itself and the message is clear. Now, stepping OUTSIDE the internal story that's being told, we turn our attention to the story as human beings. God told Abraham to kill his son. It was a test. ABRAHAM DIDN'T KNOW THAT. We do. So we can look at the big picture, while Abraham is stuck in the present. God just told me to kill my kid. What do I do? Any parent with a heart is going to answer the same way: "Tell Him No!" Maybe add an expletive or two after that. As unbelievers, we are not criticizing God in this story, because we are not asked to identify with him. We are criticizing the character we're supposed to admire, the one we're supposed to emulate, the one we're supposed to look up to as an example of steadfastness of faith: Abraham. But in REAL life, if someone told you he was about to kill his kid because God told him to, you would do everything in your power to stop him because, and this is key, you would not even entertain for a nanosecond the notion that he's telling you the truth. And since the subject of this thread is deconversion (and by extension deconstruction) it should be pointed out that the majority of Biblical stories are tales you would flat out reject if someone claimed them in front of you right now. Imagine someone washing up on Miami Beach right now and saying, "Lo! Spring Breakers! I just spent three days and three nights in the stomach of a whale after passing through his 25 centimeter esophagus, and I sat there with hundreds of pounds of krill in a vat of hydrochloric acid, only to go back through the esophagus for the whale to throw me up three days and three nights later (by the way, the Apple Watch battery lasts a long time, but that's how I knew how much time was passing as the acid disintegrated my skin). And I have come to tell you REPENT! REPENT! Or God will destroy Miami!" You would not have gotten two sentences into that without calling mental health experts and fitting him for a nice white coat with REALLLLY long sleeves. But you're supposed to believe Nineveh heard Jonah's warning and converted. There is no evidence of any long term sudden change of religion in Nineveh. Just a Bible story that never happened. Similar to how the story of God testing Abraham never happened. It's a story. If it were real, Abraham would be the bad guy and no one would admire him.

To be clear, I was answering a question about what's accepted about the Bible on THIS THREAD. Not on GSC. There are other sections of GSC where the Bible is treated with less skepticism (because to treat it otherwise would derail the thread).

Everyone give up? I'll just pick a more crossover song? Or give it to George, who got as close as he could while still having the wrong song

It really is cool

Right idea, wrong song. The titles are very close though. This one's a country song.

Thank you, and yes, she is.

P.S. I was not GSC's first atheist, or best. George Aar and Sudo beat me by more than a decade. I may be the noisiest.

Well, I love her But I love to fish I spend all day out on this lake And hell is all I catch But today she met me at the door Said I would have to choose If I hit that fishin hole today She'd be packin all her things And she'd be gone by noon. Well,...

I try to discourage turning against God for emotional reasons, as much as I sympathize. A faith that is lost in emotion can be regained in emotion. That's not to invalidate your journey. And I'm proud of you for thinking it through instead of just being angry at or disappointed in God. When it came to my autistic son, I realized "it's not God's fault." God is not to blame for my son's autism, my sister's ALS, my brother's lethal drug abuse, my other sister's cancer. And he's not going to heal or deliver them for the same reason. Non-existent people tend not to accomplish much. My wife and I foster kids in need. Last year we adopted one. She's a delight. People keep telling us we're doing God's work. My response is always the same: Who else is going to do it? It's an inside joke based on something Penn Jillette once said: We have to do God's work, because God knows He won't. I'm honored to have helped you realize you're not alone.

Ok fine. "And She Was" By Talking Heads

I have to say that I was THE anti-"evolutionist" in my high school, and today I am really embarrassed about it. I remember submitting a science project asking why horses and cows have different kinds of teeth when they eat the same kinds of grass. Or something like that. It was 40 years ago. I used to blame evolution and its doctrine of survival of the fittest for the rise of Hitler. Hitler, who, by the way, was not an atheist. And not a proper Christian. An evil SOB whose "God" was a hateful corruption of the Christian God. But not an atheist. Anyway, as I educated myself, I realized certain truths that, to be honest, quite surprised me. 1. Evolution does not have an endgame. It's not headed somewhere. 2. No species is more "advanced" than any other. We are where we are, when we are. Gorillas are just as advanced as man... it's a matter of their suitability to survive in their environment. 3. "Survival of the fittest" isn't about who's strongest. It's about who lives long enough to reproduce.

Our experiences are not mutually exclusive. The recognition that one has lost face does indeed open a floodgate that forces you to re-evaluate EVERYTHING. And that did happen to me. Some of it, I worked out by myself. Some of it, I followed the footsteps of people who walked the path long before I did. But I found that a lot of it was retracing my steps and realizing it was there all along, that I was suppressing doubts instead of recognizing their role as protectors of my conscience against self-deception. Even as a Christian, I knew the story of Job could not be true. Seen in its most pro-faith light, it makes God out to be a gigantic anus. A friend of mine once got angry because his cat died, and someone else in the family replaced him with an identical looking cat. Now, that family member wasn't actually responsible, directly or indirectly, for the first cat dying. But still, the palliative for a dead cat is empathy, not a new cat to replace the old one. But we're supposed to believe God did right by Job because he gave him a new wife and kids!?!?!?!? Only if it didn't happen and real people didn't die horrific, unnecessary deaths so that God could win a BET he KNEW he would win in the first place is such a morally bankrupt story even remotely justifiable. And this has NOTHING to do with how VPW butchered this story.

Our experiences are not mutually exclusive. The recognition that one has lost face does indeed open a floodgate that forces you to re-evaluate EVERYTHING. And that did happen to me. Some of it, I worked out by myself. Some of it, I followed the footsteps of people who walked the path long before I did. But I found that a lot of it was retracing my steps and realizing it was there all along, that I was suppressing doubts instead of recognizing their role as protectors of my conscience against self-deception. Even as a Christian, I knew the story of Job could not be true. Seen in its most pro-faith light, it makes God out to be a gigantic anus. A friend of mine once got angry because his cat died, and someone else in the family replaced him with an identical looking cat. Now, that family member wasn't actually responsible, directly or indirectly, for the first cat dying. But still, the palliative for a dead cat is empathy, not a new cat to replace the old one. But we're supposed to believe God did right by Job because he gave him a new wife and kids!?!?!?!? And there was a LOT of that. Only if it didn't happen and real people didn't die horrific, unnecessary deaths so that God could win a BET he KNEW he would win in the first place is such a morally bankrupt story even remotely justifiable. And this has NOTHING to do with how VPW butchered this story.

That the Bible says something is proof that the Bible says it. It is sufficient evidence to base a doctrine on. It proves that somewhere along the line, believers accepted this as a fact. It does NOT prove they were correct in doing so, or that the incidents relayed ever really took place. You can say "I believe this happened because the Bible says so." You cannot say, "Because the Bible says this happened, it therefore did, and how do you respond to it?" I mean, you can SAY that. But the answer might come in the form of giggles.

Re-reading the thread from the beginning and I don't recall answering this question. I don't think I ever had those worries. Maybe the route of my journey was a detour around that location. See, I WAS right. There is a God and his son is Christ and I'm born again and I'm going to heaven and the Bible is God's Word and and and... And whenever I encountered a piece that didn't fit [why don't we know Noah's wife's name when she like Eve is the mother of all living? How did so many civilizations survive the Biblical flood without interruption? If the Exodus took place as described, why didn't they name the Pharoah?] I put that piece aside. After a few years, I noticed that the pieces I put aside not only outnumbered the pieces that were positive or constructive, but the pieces set aside, for the reasons set aside, actually fit together like a shoe in a sock. So by the time I was in a position to consider the "consequences" of atheism, I had already rejected Christianity as inconsistent with reality. Fearing hell would mean accepting as truth something I was increasingly recognizing as a lie. By now you'll have heard of Pascal's Wager, which was presented in a simplified form in PFAL. Briefly summarized, it says: "You might as well believe. If you're wrong, you lose nothing, but if you're right, you gain everything. Unbelief gives you nothing to gain if you're right and everything to lose if you're wrong." Pascal's Wager is not only stupid: it posits a stupid God who can't tell a sincere believer from a poser afraid of punishment. It also presumes only two choices: unbelief or Christianity. There are THOUSANDS of other choices. Heck, there are thousands of options in Christianity alone. A God who has to threaten hell to gain worship is not a God worth worshipping. True, not all Christianities teach a literal hell, but so what? Many do. And those that don't have other issues. So to answer the question concisely: never worried about being wrong.

"I don’t mean to invite discussion of this. I missed some posts. Not sure what’s going on and it doesn’t really matter, but I couldn’t resist another opportunity to write 'four-crucified stupidity.' " I would not dare ask you to refrain.

Nathan, Because you have incomplete info. I am going to invite you to self-edit so the offending party does not feel the need to respond. How you proceed is up to you.

Ken is an idiot of the highest order, and I could see taking offense if you think he's right, but unless you do, the shoe should not fit. If it doesn't fit, no one's talking about you.