When I was about 14, I was an active evangelical evangelist at my school. Yep, I was that guy with a WWJD bracelet (What Would Jesus Do) and even a Christian T-shirt depicting the sword of the Spirit. Naturally, that led to some discussions with fellow classmates about the existence of God.
In one slightly heated debate they cried out: “So where is your God? Where does he live?” I didn’t really know how to respond, so said something from the gut: “He lives in your heart!”, and demonstrated it by pointing to my own blood-pumping muscle. I was pleasantly surprised with my spiritually-sounding answer. The pleasure was only for about 2 seconds, when I was met with a lot of laughter. “Really? What a small space. Left chamber or right chamber? Haha, what nonsense”.
It actually hurt me deeply. Others trampled in laughter on the faith that formed my entire life. Who cares if I gave an answer that secular materialists going through puberty did not comprehend? God was surely much bigger than their laughter. The only reason they could mock me, is that God gave them a mouth in the first place! (or so I thought).
For me, faith was a warm blanket, the Holy Spirit working inside of me; it was the assurance of eternal life. It was complete trust in the Father, Son and Spirit. It was the certainty of things unseen. It was my life.
The Challenge
It may therefore not be surprising that most of my Christian friends and family respond to this aspect of ‘faith’ that I lost. A couple of comments that I have received after declaring my lack of faith, some of them a bit hostile even:
- “What do you believe now? Come on, we all need to believe something!”
- “You say that a legitimate worldview must be based on reason and evidence as much as possible… Why? What an assumption. What arrogance! What blind faith you have!”
- “As a Christian, I acknowledge that I don’t have all the information to answer all of my (or your) questions, and so I must trust God and have faith that God is God.”
What is the issue with faith? Why is it so important, and is speaking about faith often so difficult once you don’t share the same faith anymore?
What is Faith?
For starters, why not ask Google? This is what it comes up with:
Where We All Have Faith
The above definition shows that there are different kinds of faith, and yes, in some respects I do have a lot of faith.
- We usually have faith in other people, especially those close to us. We can’t always prove their trustworthiness; neither do we feel the need to prove that on a daily basis!
- I firmly believe in a lot of abstract concepts: love, kindness, empathy, justice, et cetera. Notice how it is natural to say ‘I believe in love’, but it sounds strange to say: ‘I have faith in love’. Love would need to be a real thing (instead of an abstract concept) in order to be able to trust in ‘it’.
- We trust that medicine will indeed get you better, even when we don’t fully understand it ourselves. It falls under ‘a strongly held belief or theory’, for example: “The faith that the doctor will be able to cure me”.
- None of us know everything first-hand, from an all-knowing perspective, so we all need to exercise a leap of faith in order to do anything at all in life. Even to get out of bed, you need to have faith that the floor is real and will hold your weight.
So some people conclude: oh well, we all need to make a choice about faith. I believe in God. You believe in reason and science. End of discussion.
But I don’t think that is not the whole story, nor is it quite that simple.
The Christian Concept of Faith: Trust
When we look at Google’s definition of faith, we see an interesting phenomenon. When I was a believer I would prefer to describe my faith in God not in terms of the second definition: belief in God through spiritual apprehension. No, it was more mature to say it is trust in the person of God. It wasn’t just a theory; it was a relation, a trust-based relationship; just like we have with friends, family, spouse, et cetera. But magnified by ten times more trust. Friends can fail you, family can let you down, but God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. This is a cornerstone of Christian faith: trust in the person of God.
Here Comes the Tricky Bit!
Christianity ties the second form of faith (the belief in a theory about God) to the first form of faith (the trust in a person) in almost every imaginable way. It thereby creates a system in which the theory of God can never truly be questioned, because we trust Him. To question the core of your faith is to question God, to question Jesus, to question the Lord of the Universe, and your best friend (if you are evangelical). To question faith is to risk eternal damnation.
- Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. (Proverbs 3:5-6)
- For we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Cor 5:7)
All of your questions are fine as long as they lead to trust in God, for He knows best. This is the key part.
Nerdy Diagrams
Enough words. How can we put this together in a nerdy, poorly designed diagram?
Visual 1: Deflection
Because faith in God is faith in a person, a lot of believers do not feel the need to defend their faith. After all, “the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight” (1 Cor 3:19).
You think you made a really good argument against Christianity? “The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them” (Psalm 2:4)
This worked for me. When I read anti-Christian material, it just made me laugh, even when I had no real counter-argument. “Such fools! They don’t understand a thing about my God”.
(Notice how this could be the same for a good attack on specific scientific theories, where certain atheists scoff at those questioning these theories)
Visual 2: Have some respect!
Because trust in God is the basis and outer shell of protection of Christian faith, any non-Christian will always have to cut through the layer of trust to get a Christian to doubt their beliefs. This is vital to understand, because it will rarely succeed. You will most likely only have insulted the other.
For example, a conversation between a non-believer and a Christian about whether or not heaven exists is doomed to fail. The Christian will (subconsciously) trust God for His promise of eternal life, much more than any rational argument that he or she can conjure. The non-believer on the other hand is thinking he is debating with an idea, while he is actually unknowingly insulting peoples’ trust in God.
End result? Heated hearts, no winners.
I have been there myself, and I know how it feels when somebody attacks your beliefs from the outside and it does get through the layer of trust. It feels terrible. Believe me when I say that I find it often hard to create this blog, knowing that I may temporarily break through this barrier and cause pain. But somehow I feel the need for people to be able to express where I may be wrong. In a way, I still want to verify the trust I once had in God, to see if there are any reasons at all to bring it back.
The only way I started to doubt my beliefs, reasons and dogma was through arguments from the inside. By staying within the circle of people who trust in God, yet have different views. By thinking about my beliefs by myself. Ironically, by reading the Bible. This may lead to the following situation:
Visual 3: The ‘mature’ faith
While some people only reinforce their own beliefs; others do have internal doubts, questions, and they often start to become more liberal. The denomination they were once part of, is no longer the One True Church, for example. Perhaps gay marriage isn’t the ushering of the end of the world. Perhaps it is a bit hard to know whether or not to baptise an infant. They become less focused on dogma, and more focused on trust in God.
When I look at modern Christianity for example, there is a whole movement of ‘doubting’ Christians, like doubt is the trendy thing to have. To be rock-solid in your faith is not so trendy among the intellectuals, I suspect because it not postmodern, which is the culture in which we live. So people start to doubt creation, the flood, the literal inspiration of the Bible, substitutional atonement; basically almost the whole deal. Instead, they become more action-focused.
I have been there. It feels good yet weird at the same time. Your faith is no longer ‘clear’. You start to dislike those people who have it all figured out, and place great value in freedom, respect, authenticity.
Other Christians were sometimes a little worried about my doubts, but not too much. I wasn’t worried about my doubt too much. I was trying to look for answers, but I actually felt I didn’t even fully need the answers. Why not?
Because of the standard, ever-powerful answer: Why don’t you trust God?
If you are “in” this system, it feels great. But looking at it from the outside, it forms an (almost) perfect self-reinforcing system. One needs to have faith; and once you have it, you need to have a lot of balls to say that you did not receive it from the Heavenly Father in this trusting relationship.
This can go on for a long time. Perhaps even a lifetime.
Visual 4: The End of Faith
For me, the purple inside (questions, doubts) where rationally speaking more than enough to burst through the green layer of trust in God. I had very little reason to trust God anymore. But the less reason I had, the more faith I needed! This was a very strong force in my life:
“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.” (Habacuc 3:17-18)
Until the questions became so big, it took one emotional event to hit me and blow away that very trust. That was the moment everything came crumbling down, and the tension that was build up on the inside was finally gone (in a matter of a day, really). God was simply not who I thought He was. And after a few weeks, He didn’t exist necessarily at all anymore. All those doubts were no longer tests of my faith; they were pointers to something else: to a reality outside of my faith in God. For me as a believer, this was the impossible that could never happen. Yet it happened. The One who said that He would never lose one of His sheep, lost me.
Leaving faith in God is like leaving your parents. For some this will be a gradual process, for others it will be a sudden announcement of their parent’s death. For none it is fun. For all, it feels like we are more mature, for better or for worse.
I hope you get it. I have respect for your faith, if you have any. I am just trying to explain what happened to me. The trust that kept me in was nothing but a coping mechanism after all.
But What about Faith in Science, Reason and Evidence?
So now I explained how this Biblical concept of faith kept me a Christian. But what about the other way around? Don’t I have blind faith now in science, reason and evidence? I get this argument thrown a lot at me.
Yes, I have faith in reason and evidence, but I consider it a very different kind of faith than faith in God. For starters, they are not even fundamentally incompatible… there are so many Christian scientists. Here are my other reasons:
- I don’t trust in reason and evidence like I trust in a person. They are merely ideas, and they can be challenged at any time. I don’t have “faith” in Albert Einstein like I had “faith” in Jesus.
- Science should be continually questioning itself. Even the very philosophy of science is a shifting field, so our understanding of it changes continuously as well. It is simply our best way to try and make sense of the world, with the best methods we can think of.
- Science doesn’t have an answer to all my questions, like God is supposed to be able to. And that is fine. “I don’t know” is the most honest answer to a lot of questions, especially the ‘why’ questions.
- There is no threat of damnation, or promises of an afterlife with faith in reason, evidence or science.
In other words, I believe all ‘faith’ of the second category (religious or strong beliefs) can and should be continuously approached with critical analysis rather than admiration. Trust should play a little role in finding out the truth, unless you don’t really care about the truth. Hence the freethinking. Hence questioning everything. Hence the scepticism.
Difficult? Yes.
Worth it? Absolutely.
Lessons learned
What are the take-away lessons from all of this?
- However much we would like to be objective, debates about faith issues run far deeper than the actual arguments and reasons used.
- Christian faith, and faith in science are two very different types of faith; it could be argued they don’t even occupy the same domain (thereby you can have Christian scientists)
- Because faith for Christians is in a person, attacking their ideas is also attacking that person. It is similar to mocking their friends or parents. You need to make very clear this is not your intention, or just refrain from doing it altogether.
- If a secular person says they do not have “faith”, they mean they do not have faith in any supernatural entity that cannot be observed. Do not start to play word games on other meanings of faith, and then just assert we are all in the same boat.
Appendix.
You don’t believe that faith in God is something different than faith in reason and evidence? Or you don’t understand why having faith is so important for Christians, instead of relying on plain evidence? After all, if you have proof, you don’t need faith.
Just check out what the Bible says about faith:
- Faith is confidence, assurance, understanding:
- Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (Heb 11:1)
- “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible” (Heb 11:2)
- You are condemned without faith, but gain eternal life through faith
- Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ (Gal 2:16)
- And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (Heb 11:6)
- For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
- You can’t just choose to have faith, it comes from God
- For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Eph 2:8-9)
- No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. (John 6:44)
- God always knows better, distrust your own reasoning and observations:
- Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. (Proverbs 3:5-6)
- For we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Cor 5:7)
- By faith you can do miracles:
- “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. (Mark 11:22-24)
Losing Your BFF 
November 26, 2015 at 20:31
Hi EJ, another interesting post, thanks for sharing. So in this you seem to suggest, if I understand you correctly, that there is something inherent in Christianity that stops it’s followers questioning things because of the symbiosis of trusting in God in a relational sense and the fundamental assumption that He exists. You quote from Hebrews ‘we walk by faith, not by sight’ and Proverbs -‘we lean not on our own understanding…’ in this regard. I’m not sure I buy this. One of Christianity’s greatest strengths is that it’s falsifiable – not the premise that an abstract deity exists, but that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, exists who was crucified in 33AD and was reported to have appeared to hundreds thereafter. Then there is the explosion of the early church. At any point, we can think critically about whether the claims of Jesus make sense and whether the gospels are historically reliable. There are scholars who think that the historical Jesus and the Jesus of the gospels are two different people, and there are those who think the Jesus of the gospels is the real, historical Jesus. I do not feel any guilt or sense that I am betraying the Holy Spirit by investigating the veracity of the gospels. The important thing is the falsifiability factor, and it troubles me when I hear atheists (not necessarily you) essentially setting up an un-falsifiable worldview, that of naturalism, by setting the parameters of what satisfies their own self-imposed requirements of reason and evidence, precluding other valuable forms of gaining understanding.
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November 27, 2015 at 03:01
Hi Emma,
Good point. I could not possibly cover everything in this post, it was already way too long 🙂
I know Christianity has some verifiable aspects to it. I was not implying that it’s all some airy-fairy tale that has nothing real or historic about it. I don’t agree with those people saying that Christ never actually lived, for example. Two questions though:
1. What would convince you that your faith is false?
There was a debate between Bill Nye (“the science guy”) and Ken Ham (the fundamentalist creationist) last year, and at the end the question was asked: what could change your opinion? Nye said: evidence, Ham said: nothing. Like the apostle Paul said: even if an angel appeared, you should not accept a different gospel, let him be cursed! (Galatians 1). So I am curious if things would be different for you? Let’s say you found reasonably good evidence that Jesus never rose from the death, would you readily accept it? Or you found evidence that prayer has no measurable effect? Although there are verifiable aspects to the Christian faith, I don’t think that is the core issue why people believe, or would no longer believe. The core thing is trust in God, which is a really potent force. Would you agree giving up your faith in God would be much harder than just a simple acknowledgement of (hypothetical) evidence?
2. How do people get faith?
I dare say that less than 0.1% of the people who become Christians did a serious and thorough investigations into the historical and verifiable claims of Christianity before they started to believe. Rather, it was through birth into a Christian family, by friends, social pressure, a need for meaning, purpose, community, questions about life, hopelessness, etcetera. I do believe Christianity is a very powerful way of life, in that it covers basically everything and it can truly change people; also their character for the better. But for the big majority of Christians, proof only follows after they are already deep into faith, where the trust in God is well established, right? I am pointing out in this article that Christian faith has very strong mechanisms in place to make sure the faith stays, even when opposite evidence may stare you in the face.
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November 27, 2015 at 21:18
Regarding point number 2 on how people ‘get’ faith, I think you’re right (although it’s purely speculation), that many religious people arrive at their faith through the influence of family, friends, a need for meaning and purpose etc. But many of the testimonies of people who have grown up in Christian families came to a point where they didn’t want to just blindly follow the religion of their parents, particularly after coming to a crisis in their lives, and question it, investigate it and own it for themselves. Of course, by that point, some might say that there are fundamental assumptions or premises that are subconsciously ingrained that predispose them to believe. It’s not so black and white in cases where one parent is a devout follower and the other a staunch atheist (I have known such cases), nor in cases where someone converts to Christianity and faces the consequences of being disowned by their family, community and even faces violence and threats of death.
Re: point 1, it would take good evidence and reason that Jesus wasn’t who he said he was from the gospel accounts, that the resurrection was false and therefore that the explosion of the spread of the early church was down to a few odd jobs who let things get out of hand. I’ve found this website helpful: http://www.bethinking.org/bible in hat respect, but for the sake of balance I’m sure you could point me to some written from the perspective and worldview of non-believers?
Now in the case of people like Bill Nye, I wonder when they say ‘evidence’ what the criteria for that is, and where they get their certainty that this criteria is ‘the’ one for discerning true reality. I’m reminded of the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, David Hume, who wrote that ‘ If we take in our hand any Volume; of Divinity or School Metaphysics, for Instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract Reasoning concerning Quantity or Number? No. Does it contain any experimental Reasoning concerning Matter of Fact and Existence? No. Commit it then to the Flames: For it can contain nothing but Sophistry and Illusion’ (An Enquiry in Human Understanding). This was Hume’s criteria for ascertaining the truth about reality and dispensing with unfounded nonsense, as a naturalist. But Hume’s, and all who follow his logic, statement is logically self-defeating, for his criteria doesn’t stand up to its own test, so it too should be ‘committed to the Flames’. So I wonder, with Bill Nye, what would it take for him to believe in God? Perhaps only something as up front as an Appearance. But then if someone wanted to they could even explain that away with references to hallucinations due to brain chemistry and such like, as many do with near death experiences.
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December 5, 2015 at 05:40
Hi Emma,
Been rather busy here, but would like to respond to your questions.
Regarding the resurrection of Christ: here the burden of proof is really on the Christians. We are talking about an event that may or may not have happened 2000 years ago, in a time when there were no camera’s and history writing was not really up to modern standards. We have conflicting resurrection accounts from different gospel writers, decades after the events happened, and the earliest sources are hundreds of years later. Basically, it cannot be argued 100% either way, which makes it non-verifiable.
And theoretically you are right that the existence of God could never be proven, because whatever God could do in terms of miracles could (for example) also be done by a highly advanced alien race with technology beyond our wildest dreams.
I find the argument of ‘cutting the own branch you are sitting on’ a bit limited, like that is the end of the discussion. I would differentiate between ideas and real ‘things’. With ideas, we cannot provide ‘evidence’ for their existence (e.g. love, or logic) but we can still reason about them. With real things however, we need evidence and reason. If God is real and not just an abstraction, then we need evidence.This is not cutting the branch you are sitting on, but it are seperate things.
I thereby don’t really agree with Hume, I think it is valid to reason about concepts, ideas and abstractions, as long as one recognizes them as such. When those reasons relate to real world things, then we also need good evidence to support our claims, and cannot take things on ‘faith’.
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December 4, 2015 at 21:56
Hi,
I totally agree with you that faith in science and faith in God are two different things, and you can have both, either, or none, so I find it hard to understand why people would engage with you on that front. It is interesting though that Google in a sense has it backwards: in the etymology of the word, the second meaning (religious faith) is primary, and the first meaning (faith in a person) is a derivative of that. Faith in God precedes faith in people (even Descartes would agree with that), in love, and in justice.
It’s probably not totally fair to base that on the etymology of the (English) word. But it points towards the fundamental flaw in your article and diagrams. Faith/trust is not the shell around beliefs. Faith/trust is the core around which beliefs are formed. The way you describe it, faith is a defense mechanism for irrational beliefs. But if you take faith as the starting point, it is not irrational but non-rational. We can talk rationally about it, and I have no doubt Christianity is the soundest, best developed, best tested world view with the best outcomes, and I’ll be happy to defend it as such. But in the end faith does not start with reason. The deep conviction, and sometimes experience, ‘God is there’ precedes rational thought.
Therefore freethinking is freefallthinking. It might be a nice feeling, but at the end of the road you’ll end up crushed to bits. Thinking tethered to God’s truth prevents accidents. It does not make the thinking less stringent. It just recognises that rational thought is not the only and final judge of what is true and good.
To be honest, I don’t hope you’ll come back to the trust you had in God. As you write, it proved nothing but a coping mechanism, an outer shell. That is the real life connection to the theological thought that God never loses his sheep, that you therefore never were a sheep, and that that is good news because it means you can still always become one. Only when trust becomes the core giving life to your belief content it is Christian faith.
On a side note, I was really amazed at what you wrote about Christians being insulted or injured by people questioning their beliefs. I have been an evangelist and missionary for over twenty years, and I have never ever felt that way. I can’t even think of why I would feel insulted. If people do not share my faith, what else can I expect than that they point out where they think I go wrong? I even take it as a compliment that they make the effort to do so (okay, internet trolls excepted). That you felt insulted and injured is another indication trust had the wrong place in your Christian identity.
Now that you’ve given such a wonderfully clear analysis of what was wrong with your faith, you have a wonderful place to start to arrive at the right faith!Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and he rose again on the third day. I am praying you’ll get there soon.
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December 5, 2015 at 06:11
Marten,
I am happy to see you identify faith as non-rational. One of my other blog posts will be about that as well. That deep conviction, where does it come from? I have truly had that deep conviction as well, the awareness of Gods presence, yet now that I look back at it, it was merely a feeling. Precisely because faith is non-rational, yet establishes itself so deeply in our whole human nature, it feels like supernatural assurance of the reality of God and His words. It may be the ‘peace that transcends all understanding’. Yet I now think it has much more to do with the working of our brains, and human psychology, than anything else. Just look at all the denominations and religions there are, and see how people are all experiencing this ‘faith’ that is non-rational, yet assures them of the ‘truth’. I would say thereby that faith is really a very bad indicator of Truth, which should always trump faith.
I know my diagrams are an oversimplification. And you are right, from a believers point of view, the trust is indeed the core. It was for me as well.
Yet now I also see that such a ‘core’ allows you to not truly examen your own reasons and beliefs, and thereby acts as an outer shell when attacked from the outside. It could be drawn both ways, depending on the point you want to make. My point is that faith is so stable because the trust (either as core or as a shell) will protect the whole.
I can understand your statements regarding freefallthinking, but I think that just comes from Christian assumptions about the sinful nature of humankind. Really, many secular humanists these days live lives just fine. So why would you end up crushed to bits? You say it without giving any proof to your statement whatsoever.
I don’t think you can just assert that faith is a better way of getting to the truth than evidence & reasoning. If I apply reason to your statement that faith (a non-rational ‘deep conviction’) is the best way to gain truth, it is all too easy to see that you may be heavily misguided. Again, why would your deep conviction be any better than those from other religions? In a way, it is the age-old God-of-the-gaps idea, but then applied to human emotions. “I feel good, convinced and peaceful when thinking about God -> therefore God”. It is exactly what I try to deconstruct here on my blog.
At the end of your response, you were doing the classic “no-true-Scotsmen” fallacy. Of course I was a real believer, and trust was at my core. Yet in hindsight, it was also a protective outer shell, like it is for you. You trust God, so you don’t necessarily have to find the answers to questions you may have or should have. At least, that is how it works for the vast, vast majority of believers.
And when people attack your beliefs for what they are, that often hurts. Most Christians would find it insulting to hear from others that their heavenly Father is a bloodthirsty genocist, but that is exactly what happens in the OT. Or they would be insulted to hear that Jesus is a liar and false prophet, for predicting he would be back within one generation. If such statements do not insult you, well, then I think you are the exception, or it is time for me to question your faith in the Abba, Father 🙂
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December 31, 2015 at 10:36
“many secular humanists these days live lives just fine. So why would you end up crushed to bits?” I referred to eternal damnation here; evidenced by what God says in his Word.
Faith in God is non-rational and can be defended rationally. Lack of faith in God is non-rational and can be defended rationally. Just not very well, that is why there are so few atheists. Looking around in the world and concluding it is there by chance asks for a suspension of disbelief in atheism that most people are not capable of.
I notice that you’ve been a religious follower of atheist blogs, because all of them like to throw around the ‘true-Scotsmen-fallacy’, often with as little justification as you do. It’s time to point out the ‘true-Scotsman-fallacy’ fallacy. Many Christians believe that no born-again Christian will become unborn. They base that on how they understand the Bible. It is not unknown to them that some people leave the church. From that they’ll conclude that these people either are making a detour or were never born again. As only God sees the heart, they are not shocked by that. Neither is it evidence of the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy. First of all it is not an a posteriori saving of the position, as this has been seen as a possibility all along. Second, claiming that it is a ‘true Scotsman’ is claiming that you know that the faith Christians are talking about is an impossibility. Because you cannot see the heart of other people just as they cannot see yours, you are claiming too much. Saying ‘he probably never was born again’ when someone denies God displays the humility of acknowledging you cannot truly know another’s heart. Saying ‘if you say that, it’s a ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy’ displays the arrogance of thinking to know not just what is in your heart, but also in that of others. And that is the ‘no true Scotsman fallacy’ fallacy.
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January 5, 2016 at 20:38
The threat of hell… will post about that more later on.
You make a VERY quick conclusion that lack of faith in God is non-rational. Do you believe there is a rock in the form of a teapot floating around Mars? You can’t be 100% sure either way, so is it therefore ‘non rational’ to say you lack faith in a floating teapot around Mars?
In my observation, agnostic atheism requires a lot of courage to say “I don’t know”, “there is probably nothing after death”, “we don’t know the future”, etc. People like to hear different things, and that makes perfect sense from peoples point of view. Just not from a reality point of view.
Your reponse to the ‘no true Scotsman fallacy’ is a bit mystical to me. Are you saying I can’t tell you how I have believed myself, because you are entitled to think something different about my beliefs? That it is somehow arrogant to correct someone elses understanding about what I myself believe?
All that I see when someone says I was never truly a Christian, is a dismissal of my faith to fit their own theological boxes. When you would speak to any other ex-adherent of religion X, Y or Z you would never be so quick to doubt their former beliefs. Only when it comes to your own, it is hard to believe that someone would step out of it, or fall out of it.
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February 21, 2016 at 23:23
Answer to your Jan.5 reply:
1. Faith in God and believing there’s a teapot floating around Mars is very different. This is not a serious argument. Teapots around Mars are not relevant, interesting, or have good arguments for them. Whether or not we should have faith is God is relevant, interesting, and has good arguments for it. (If you doubt that, just think of the difference in the number of people investing time in thinking about the two subjects.)
2. I will grant that you had a conviction on the truth of Christianity like a Muslim had a conviction about the truth of Islam that both of you could lose. I just say that Christians hold, as you should well know, that faith is more than that. When Christians are talking about ‘real faith’ we are making an ontological claim. I wouldn’t know for the world why I should grant the same status to Islamic and Christian faith, as I believe the one is a mistaken conviction about God and the world, while the other is a new life coming from being born again by the Spirit of God. You can lose Christianity as a more or less correct conviction about God and the world; you cannot lose it as a new life given by the Spirit of God. The ‘no true Scotman’ dig only holds if you talk about Christianity as an opinion. I don’t do that. The ‘no true Scotsman’ people only show they don’t understand what Christians are talking about.
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February 26, 2016 at 20:50
Marten,
The floating teapot is just an example to show how hard it is to prove a negative. The burden of proof is on Christians when they are claiming something, not on the agnostics. Having insufficient evidence to support a claim and thereby dismissing the claim as true is very rational, while keeping an open mind for new evidence.
On your other point: in the 30 or so years that I was a christian, I have never heard anybody question my faith or my rebirth status. Neither did you. I felt I was born again, I prayed, I cried, I was filled with joy when thinking about my Saviour and Lord, I believed with all my mind and heart, I really loved God. Christianity was not an opinion for me at all, Jesus was my life. Hence the pain of leaving it all behind, and this blog is called “losing your BFF” and not “losing your best idea”.
So what are you trying to say? That I was never a Christian at all? If so, please give me a definition of a Christian that excludes the EJ of a few years back, and includes you and other Christians. It won’t work, unless you are going to include a clause like “and maintain this faith till the very end” which makes it absolutely unusable to distinguish who is a Christian and who is not in the here and now.
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December 12, 2015 at 23:52
Hi! I just read through your blog and I am amazed at how similar my recent deconversion has been. You have been very good at finding the best words (and respectful attitude) to express something so complex. I deeply understand your growing malaise with “God’s mission” and gospel. I am currently training as a pediatrician, and my “Nok” experience was lived through accompanying families through the suffering of loosing their child. How could I ever even think of sharing the gospel with those families? At the very beginning of my doubts, it seemed impossible to me to live a life without Jesus – he was my absolute everything. How could I refuse a love I was convinced I so desesperately needed? So I struggled deeply, yet I did taste the peace of believing “he knows what is best, even if I don’t understand”. In the end however what killed my christian faith was not actually witnessing the suffering but rather seeing the strong love these families had for each other and how inspired I was by many of my fellow humans being. There might not be another “why” than a “meaningless” evolutionary advantage, but I now feel the uncomparable joy in being fully involved in my relationships by “loving my neighbor” without my previous gospel filter. I wish with all my heart I could avoid the pain this change in my life has brought to people I love, ie my family and christian friends, but it had come to a point where the inner dissonance was too great. Thanks for allowing me to feel a little more “ok” by reading your blog. 🙂
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December 14, 2015 at 07:27
Hi Rachel,
Great to see that you enjoy this blog and feel a little bit more “ok” :-). I like how you say that you are now involved in loving relationships without the ‘gospel filter’, I recognize that too. All of a sudden it is truly you (me) doing the loving and not the Holy Spirit anymore, plus no need to convert anyone.
Hope you are finding like minded people to share with? There are tons.
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January 24, 2016 at 08:35
Just found this blog. Seems there’s a lot of interesting stuff here.
Good for some Sunday reading. 😉
Thanks!
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January 24, 2016 at 10:55
Thank you. I have lots more articles planned… stay tuned 🙂
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