THE STRUGGLE WITHIN
Some think the rapture comes before the tribulation. Others think it comes after.
I believe in the doctrine of "once saved, always saved". That doctrine is based on the premise, that once you commit your life to Christ, as God has said, "I will never leave you or forsake you". ~ Hebrews 13:5b
Some people believe in the doctrine that one can fall from grace and need to be saved again and again.
Glory was a legend in the Alabama hills.
Famous for her moonshine and the quality distilled.
If you had arthritic tingents for monetary gain
She'd sell you corn whiskey for the pain.
But come camp meetin' time
O, Glory, how she'd shine.
They called her 'Shoutin' Glo' at meetin' time.
Shoutin' "Glory, glory, I am saved, Hallelujah!"
One week in the summer, she would walk that line!
Come the second Monday in the month you'd hear her cry,
"Camp meetin's over grab a jug, let's have a time!"
Those lyrics to a rather obscure bluegrass song by Red, White, and Bluegrass, describe a false interpretation of what I call the, "fall from Grace" doctrine
Both Doctrinal beliefs are problematic in much the same way.
One could take advantage of the "once saved" doctrine, by returning to their old life because they are now confident they are safe from God's ultimate judgment. I submit that he who practices (for want of a better word) this belief, probably isn't really saved at all.
There is, after all, a difference between a head knowledge and a heart knowledge.
One who believes the "fall from Grace" doctrine, will oft times "raise Hell" During the week and get saved again every Sunday morning. I've known people who actually do this.
The problem with this doctrine, I think, (because I don't believe this doctrine so, I don't really know) is that it would seem to imply, once again, that the practitioner of this doctrine is, as in the other doctrine, not really saved. But, it is more based on emotion than the other.
There are times in my life that I wonder if I'm really saved because often I go for long periods of time when I act like anything but a Christian. That worries me, but then, I think, if I worry about that, I must be a Christian, because the unbeliever who doesn't follow God wouldn't worry about such a thing.
Circular reasoning, perhaps?
In other words, it is often healthy to have doubts. But worrisome.
I don't like that worrisome feeling.
These days, as I approach ever closer to my time of death, and the signs of the end times seem to rush at us with increasing rapidity, I am currently in a period where I am focusing more on trying to live my life in such a way that others can see Jesus in me.
That is a Christian's best testimony, in my humble opinion.
I think my Christianity needs a shot in the arm, metaphorically speaking, ever so often, and more and more often as we inch closer to Christ's return.
There are other times when I believe there can be no doubt as to my salvation because I seem to have a deeper understanding of the nature of God than others who profess their Christianity.
Christians know there is a knowledge of the nature of God that simply hasn't been imparted to those who have a mere head knowledge of God rather than a heart knowledge.
And the infuriating thing about that, to me, is that there seems to be no way that I can pass that particular knowledge on to those who profess their Christianity, but don't seem to understand it the way I do. This would explain why I often get frustrated and angry with those whom I discuss these belief systems.
I'm not saying I know more than anyone else. I most assuredly don't. But there are certain things about the nature of God of which I seem to have a firm grasp, that many "intellectual" Biblical scholars don't seem to grasp at all.
That is perplexing to me, but then, God does say there are things the unbeliever simply can't understand without the indwelling of the Spirit in their lives. So, those scholars who have oh so much more head knowledge and book learning about the nature of God than I do, appear totally unaware of what to me seems so simple.
Am I right? Am I wrong? I truly don't know.
And so, I toss the dice and hedge my bets by leaning toward what I believe to be the right side. The side described by Christ in the sermon on the mount, so I can be better prepared (if one can be prepared at all) for the second coming of Christ, or the rapture, whichever comes first.
If the rapture comes first, I can only pray that I am strong enough when I am faced with a very real challenge to choose between my life and my faith.
Again, this is something I truly don't know, however, in real life situations when I have been faced with the choice of professing my faith or suffer varying degrees of persecution for what I believe, I have passed the test, and bravely professed my Christianity.
But those are poor examples. Those situations didn't involve actual physical pain or the threat of death. Could I, as Rachel Scott, at Columbine High School in Colorado did, look certain death in the face and say, without hesitation, "Yes, I believe in God"?
I'd much rather Jesus come back first, so I don't have to find out the hard way.
Either way, we'll all just have to wait, watch, and see.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Pray and Vote!
My brother, a Minister, Pastor, and Retired Missionary to the Philipines, sent this to me:
He also forwarded this e-mail to me:
Believing that November 4th is a critical day in the life of America, I feel compelled to send this note I received from a friend this morning that we all might continually be called to prayer asking in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to fight one more battle for us ALL. This is truly what I have been teaching the last several weeks for God states "this battle is not yours, it is God's". Let us remember that God is faithful to hear the cry of His children.........AND move mountains!!
It is the desire of my heart that this be passed on to all who will pray.......
Are you sensing that there is something different about this presidential election? I was telling someone just recently that it seems like this election is far more serious than those in the recent past. Something in my spirit is very uneasy. In the past I have felt the need to pray for different elections but I have never felt so strongly the urge to pray, and pray fervently, for an election as I do for this one. I truly believe that if the wrong person (Obama) is elected this nation will be changed forever. We may not be able to undo the things that will be unleashed during an Obama presidency.
My concern about an Obama presidency is not based on politics; it is based on righteousness. Look at any of the major moral issues and you will find Obama on the wrong side of the issue, and Palin and McCain on the right side of the issue. What makes this so disturbing is that the Obama team has raised far more money than McCain/Palin and the media is unabashedly supporting Obama with every story and headline they write. Currently McCain/Palin is behind in the polls and is having a very difficult time. Some in the media have suggested that the race is over and there is little or nothing McCain can do to change the outcome. Oh how wrong they are!
Let me briefly share a story I recently read in 2 Samuel Chapter 5. David had just become king of Israel and the Philistines went up to wage war against him. So David inquired of the Lord and said, 'Shall I go and attack the Philistines? Will you hand them over to me?' The LORD said, 'Yes I will surely hand them over to you.' So David went and defeated them. He said, 'As waters break out, the LORD has broken out against my enemies before me.'
After suffering a great loss in the first battle the Philistines must have thought they now knew David's defense strategy and they would be ready for him the next time, because once more the Philistines came up to attack David. So once again David inquired of the LORD, but this time the Lord gave different instructions. He said to David, 'Do not go straight up, but circle around behind them and attack them in front of the balsam trees. As soon as you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees, move quickly, because that will mean the LORD has gone out in front of you to strike the Philistine army.' David obeyed the Lord and was victorious.
This story holds a very important lesson for us at this time. In most presidential elections a frontal assault, a face-to-face battle, is what is needed. But this is no ordinary election. McCain is trying all the normal tactics but he is not prevailing. It seems no matter what he says or does it is not effective. I am convinced this election CANNOT be won using normal methods. Just as the Lord told David to go around behind the enemy and attack him there, so we must go around the face of this election and wage war where the battle is truly raging…in the spiritual realm! The fact that the normal physical methods are not effective this time should tell us that this is a very important spiritual battle and we can only win by using spiritual methods…Prayer!
What about the sound of marching in the treetops? What is that? I have read on the Internet several accounts of fellow Christians being stirred up in their spirits to pray. Many have been drawn into times of deep prayer and weeping as they intercede for Palin and McCain. Some have woke up in the middle of the night and sensed a great need to pray, other have told of how when they heard about Sarah Palin being chosen as VP that something came over them and they wept and felt a need to pray for Her and McCain. Many others are feeling the calling and urging of the Spirit to enter into a time of fervent prayer and fasting for Palin and McCain and our nation.
What is this unusually stirring that is occurring? I believe it is the Sound of the Lord marching in the trees, calling his children to act quickly to pray and fast for Palin and McCain. Think about this, what would the marching have sounded like to David? It may have sounded like the rustling of leaves as when wind blows through them, but was this time something was different and out of the ordinary. Maybe it was like the sound of the great wind when the Spirit moved on the day of Pentecost. Also, God’s people are referred to as Trees of Righteous in Isaiah 61. So the sound of the Lord marching in the treetops in David’s time is a portrait of the Spirit of the Lord moving among and stirring up his children today.
So what are we to do when we sense this stirring of the Spirit? Two things, first we are to take it as the sign that the Lord is moving out in front of us. Anytime the Lord calls us to do something he goes ahead of us to prepare the way and fight for us. When Joshua returned from spying out Jericho the Lord gave him insight to see that the Lord had removed the Jericho ’s protection so Israel could defeat them. When the Lord calls us into battle he goes ahead of us, removes the enemy’s protection, and fights for us to give us the victory. Secondly, the Lord tells us when we sense the stirring of the Spirit we are to act quickly and join Him in the battle (through prayer, fasting, praise and obedience)
This election is by no means lost. For God would not be stirring up his children all across this nation and indeed around the world, to pray, if he did not want to give us the victory in this election. And he wants us to join him in the battle. God will hear the cries of his children if we will only cry out to him with fervent, earnest, prayers for this election and this nation. If those who are being drawn to prayer by the Spirit will indeed enter into a time of prayer and seeking His face, then God will have mercy on America spare us from having an ungodly leader, I’m sure of it!
One more thought, after the last debate, so-called ‘conservative’ David Brooks gushed about Obama, 'I thought Obama had the night he needed to have. You know, through this whole 20 month marathon, I think what struck me is how incredibly even he is. And how frankly reassuring he is. It is like you’re camping, and you wake up one morning, and there is a mountain. And then the next morning, there is a mountain, and there’s the next morning, there’s a mountain. Obama is just the mountain. He is just there. He is always the same, he doesn't hurt himself. McCain can sometimes lob a cannonball at the mountain, but the mountain doesn't move, and the mountain doesn't care. And so I think his steadiness, his temperament has been the dramatic theme of this campaign, dramatic in being undramatic. And it was on display tonight. And the good part of the mountain is that he is reassuring and reliable.'
I’m really glad he used the word ‘mountain’ to describe Obama. It caused me to remember what Jesus said about unmovable mountains. Jesus said, I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.'
And it only takes a little faith!
This election can only be won by going around the face of the election and attacking the enemy where he is vulnerable, through prayer, fasting and praise. If you hear the sound of the Lord marching in the tree tops, if you feel the stirring of the Spirit calling you to pray, then move quickly into a time of prayer, for God is moving ahead of you at that time to give us the victory. May God give us ears to hear the marching!
Together with you in the battle, Scott Whitley
Vote and Pray! Pray and Vote!
My brother, a Minister, Pastor, and Retired Missionary to the Philipines, sent this to me:
He also forwarded this e-mail to me:
Believing that November 4th is a critical day in the life of America, I feel compelled to send this note I received from a friend this morning that we all might continually be called to prayer asking in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to fight one more battle for us ALL. This is truly what I have been teaching the last several weeks for God states "this battle is not yours, it is God's". Let us remember that God is faithful to hear the cry of His children.........AND move mountains!!
It is the desire of my heart that this be passed on to all who will pray.......
Are you sensing that there is something different about this presidential election? I was telling someone just recently that it seems like this election is far more serious than those in the recent past. Something in my spirit is very uneasy. In the past I have felt the need to pray for different elections but I have never felt so strongly the urge to pray, and pray fervently, for an election as I do for this one. I truly believe that if the wrong person (Obama) is elected this nation will be changed forever. We may not be able to undo the things that will be unleashed during an Obama presidency.
My concern about an Obama presidency is not based on politics; it is based on righteousness. Look at any of the major moral issues and you will find Obama on the wrong side of the issue, and Palin and McCain on the right side of the issue. What makes this so disturbing is that the Obama team has raised far more money than McCain/Palin and the media is unabashedly supporting Obama with every story and headline they write. Currently McCain/Palin is behind in the polls and is having a very difficult time. Some in the media have suggested that the race is over and there is little or nothing McCain can do to change the outcome. Oh how wrong they are!
Let me briefly share a story I recently read in 2 Samuel Chapter 5. David had just become king of Israel and the Philistines went up to wage war against him. So David inquired of the Lord and said, 'Shall I go and attack the Philistines? Will you hand them over to me?' The LORD said, 'Yes I will surely hand them over to you.' So David went and defeated them. He said, 'As waters break out, the LORD has broken out against my enemies before me.'
After suffering a great loss in the first battle the Philistines must have thought they now knew David's defense strategy and they would be ready for him the next time, because once more the Philistines came up to attack David. So once again David inquired of the LORD, but this time the Lord gave different instructions. He said to David, 'Do not go straight up, but circle around behind them and attack them in front of the balsam trees. As soon as you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees, move quickly, because that will mean the LORD has gone out in front of you to strike the Philistine army.' David obeyed the Lord and was victorious.
This story holds a very important lesson for us at this time. In most presidential elections a frontal assault, a face-to-face battle, is what is needed. But this is no ordinary election. McCain is trying all the normal tactics but he is not prevailing. It seems no matter what he says or does it is not effective. I am convinced this election CANNOT be won using normal methods. Just as the Lord told David to go around behind the enemy and attack him there, so we must go around the face of this election and wage war where the battle is truly raging…in the spiritual realm! The fact that the normal physical methods are not effective this time should tell us that this is a very important spiritual battle and we can only win by using spiritual methods…Prayer!
What about the sound of marching in the treetops? What is that? I have read on the Internet several accounts of fellow Christians being stirred up in their spirits to pray. Many have been drawn into times of deep prayer and weeping as they intercede for Palin and McCain. Some have woke up in the middle of the night and sensed a great need to pray, other have told of how when they heard about Sarah Palin being chosen as VP that something came over them and they wept and felt a need to pray for Her and McCain. Many others are feeling the calling and urging of the Spirit to enter into a time of fervent prayer and fasting for Palin and McCain and our nation.
What is this unusually stirring that is occurring? I believe it is the Sound of the Lord marching in the trees, calling his children to act quickly to pray and fast for Palin and McCain. Think about this, what would the marching have sounded like to David? It may have sounded like the rustling of leaves as when wind blows through them, but was this time something was different and out of the ordinary. Maybe it was like the sound of the great wind when the Spirit moved on the day of Pentecost. Also, God’s people are referred to as Trees of Righteous in Isaiah 61. So the sound of the Lord marching in the treetops in David’s time is a portrait of the Spirit of the Lord moving among and stirring up his children today.
So what are we to do when we sense this stirring of the Spirit? Two things, first we are to take it as the sign that the Lord is moving out in front of us. Anytime the Lord calls us to do something he goes ahead of us to prepare the way and fight for us. When Joshua returned from spying out Jericho the Lord gave him insight to see that the Lord had removed the Jericho ’s protection so Israel could defeat them. When the Lord calls us into battle he goes ahead of us, removes the enemy’s protection, and fights for us to give us the victory. Secondly, the Lord tells us when we sense the stirring of the Spirit we are to act quickly and join Him in the battle (through prayer, fasting, praise and obedience)
This election is by no means lost. For God would not be stirring up his children all across this nation and indeed around the world, to pray, if he did not want to give us the victory in this election. And he wants us to join him in the battle. God will hear the cries of his children if we will only cry out to him with fervent, earnest, prayers for this election and this nation. If those who are being drawn to prayer by the Spirit will indeed enter into a time of prayer and seeking His face, then God will have mercy on America spare us from having an ungodly leader, I’m sure of it!
One more thought, after the last debate, so-called ‘conservative’ David Brooks gushed about Obama, 'I thought Obama had the night he needed to have. You know, through this whole 20 month marathon, I think what struck me is how incredibly even he is. And how frankly reassuring he is. It is like you’re camping, and you wake up one morning, and there is a mountain. And then the next morning, there is a mountain, and there’s the next morning, there’s a mountain. Obama is just the mountain. He is just there. He is always the same, he doesn't hurt himself. McCain can sometimes lob a cannonball at the mountain, but the mountain doesn't move, and the mountain doesn't care. And so I think his steadiness, his temperament has been the dramatic theme of this campaign, dramatic in being undramatic. And it was on display tonight. And the good part of the mountain is that he is reassuring and reliable.'
I’m really glad he used the word ‘mountain’ to describe Obama. It caused me to remember what Jesus said about unmovable mountains. Jesus said, I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.'
And it only takes a little faith!
This election can only be won by going around the face of the election and attacking the enemy where he is vulnerable, through prayer, fasting and praise. If you hear the sound of the Lord marching in the tree tops, if you feel the stirring of the Spirit calling you to pray, then move quickly into a time of prayer, for God is moving ahead of you at that time to give us the victory. May God give us ears to hear the marching!
Together with you in the battle, Scott Whitley
Vote and Pray! Pray and Vote!
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
ONLY GOD CAN CHANGE THE RULES
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
--2 Timothy 3:1-7
In reading that passage, the word, "incontinent" kind of jumped out at me. Maybe I misunderstand the Biblical definition of that word, but if it is defined the way we normally define it, it would appear that possibly Paul was referring to the consequences of man-on-man homosexual fornication. After all, incontinence is a direct consequence of repeated penetration of the rectum by a penis. It is a common medical complaint of gay men. Many gay men wear diapers because they can no longer control their bowels.
Could Paul have been directly referring to the sin of homosexuality by using this word? Would God sanctify, or even condone the kind of behavior that would cause this kind of physical damage to oneself?
If God is not willing that any should perish, how much more would he not be willing that any would have to wear diapers because they have caused permanent physical damage to themselves through homosexual acts that have already been declared abominable by the Creator of the Universe?
There were physical common sense reasons for the rules set down in Leviticus. The reason they were told not to handle or eat pork and shrimp etc, was the same reason they were told not to penetrate each other's rectums with penises:
Irreparable physical damage and even death resulted from those behaviors then.
Now, we have learned how to process and cook pork and shrimp, etc, but the ramifications (Pun not intended) of homosexual behavior are not only still physically harmful, they are now deadly, like AIDS, the various new medication resistant strains of STD's, etc.
God knew these ramifications then, and He predicted them accurately.
In Acts 10: 11-13, the author writes: 11. He(Peter) saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. 12. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. 13. Then a voice told him, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat."
14. "Surely not, Lord!" Peter replied. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean."
15. The voice spoke to him a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean."
God was referring to the old prohibitions against eating unclean food. And comparing them with the old Jewish prohibitions against fraternizing with Gentiles.
He wasn't saying homosexual behavior is now considered clean. God has never changed the rules referring to homosexuality. If He had, there would be no such thing as AIDS.
The only entity that can change God's rules is God Himself. He has the advantage of forethought. No one else does.
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
--2 Timothy 3:1-7
In reading that passage, the word, "incontinent" kind of jumped out at me. Maybe I misunderstand the Biblical definition of that word, but if it is defined the way we normally define it, it would appear that possibly Paul was referring to the consequences of man-on-man homosexual fornication. After all, incontinence is a direct consequence of repeated penetration of the rectum by a penis. It is a common medical complaint of gay men. Many gay men wear diapers because they can no longer control their bowels.
Could Paul have been directly referring to the sin of homosexuality by using this word? Would God sanctify, or even condone the kind of behavior that would cause this kind of physical damage to oneself?
If God is not willing that any should perish, how much more would he not be willing that any would have to wear diapers because they have caused permanent physical damage to themselves through homosexual acts that have already been declared abominable by the Creator of the Universe?
There were physical common sense reasons for the rules set down in Leviticus. The reason they were told not to handle or eat pork and shrimp etc, was the same reason they were told not to penetrate each other's rectums with penises:
Irreparable physical damage and even death resulted from those behaviors then.
Now, we have learned how to process and cook pork and shrimp, etc, but the ramifications (Pun not intended) of homosexual behavior are not only still physically harmful, they are now deadly, like AIDS, the various new medication resistant strains of STD's, etc.
God knew these ramifications then, and He predicted them accurately.
In Acts 10: 11-13, the author writes: 11. He(Peter) saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. 12. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. 13. Then a voice told him, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat."
14. "Surely not, Lord!" Peter replied. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean."
15. The voice spoke to him a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean."
God was referring to the old prohibitions against eating unclean food. And comparing them with the old Jewish prohibitions against fraternizing with Gentiles.
He wasn't saying homosexual behavior is now considered clean. God has never changed the rules referring to homosexuality. If He had, there would be no such thing as AIDS.
The only entity that can change God's rules is God Himself. He has the advantage of forethought. No one else does.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
THE "INCLUSIVENESS" RELIGION
One of the new age humanists religious philosophies that are prevalent in today's society is the religion of inclusiveness. This religious philosophy espouses there is only good, and there is no such thing as Hell or Satan. They claim to believe there is no real God, but instead, a sort of God consciousness which is some mystical power of all good and no evil. There is no such thing as sin, or any negatives, for that matter. There is only good. All people, regardless of their religious philosophy or religion, will go to Heaven, or at least the new-agers concept of whatever Heaven must be. I could write a great deal more about this subject but this video touches on the subject somewhat.
Apparently, Oprah Winfrey is one of the new age goddesses of our time.
My brother, the retired foreign missionary, sent this to me. I've always suspected something wasn't right about Oprah, but I always believed she had some Christian up-bringing. This video would suggest she isn't Christian at all. It is disturbing to know that she has such tremendous influence. I wonder. How many innocent people is she leading into Hell?
Many people who believe the kind of things represented in this video don't believe in Satan and Hell, yet they say they believe in God. If that were true, how do they respond to the fact that there are many more references to Hell and Satan in the Bible than there are Heaven?
One of the new age humanists religious philosophies that are prevalent in today's society is the religion of inclusiveness. This religious philosophy espouses there is only good, and there is no such thing as Hell or Satan. They claim to believe there is no real God, but instead, a sort of God consciousness which is some mystical power of all good and no evil. There is no such thing as sin, or any negatives, for that matter. There is only good. All people, regardless of their religious philosophy or religion, will go to Heaven, or at least the new-agers concept of whatever Heaven must be. I could write a great deal more about this subject but this video touches on the subject somewhat.
Apparently, Oprah Winfrey is one of the new age goddesses of our time.
My brother, the retired foreign missionary, sent this to me. I've always suspected something wasn't right about Oprah, but I always believed she had some Christian up-bringing. This video would suggest she isn't Christian at all. It is disturbing to know that she has such tremendous influence. I wonder. How many innocent people is she leading into Hell?
Many people who believe the kind of things represented in this video don't believe in Satan and Hell, yet they say they believe in God. If that were true, how do they respond to the fact that there are many more references to Hell and Satan in the Bible than there are Heaven?
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Guest Post By BrianC
The following is a guest post by BrianC, who has been posting comments on a previous post from an atheist perspective. I have invited him to tell us about his personal voyage of self-discovery:
Mark has very graciously suggested that a number of posts explaining how I got from bible believing Christian to my current state of apostasy, might by instructive, or at the very least serve as a terrible warning of what to avoid, for the true believer. It’s a longish story, but I hope sufficiently novel to keep most readers engaged. I grew up in the republic of Ireland in the 1960’s and 70’s, running the entire obligatory catholic obstacle course, of communion, confirmation and lectures on the specific and exquisite methods of torture, God had in mind for the non, or wayward roman catholic. This left me with a fairly clear idea of where I stood in relation to God. He was THE BOSS and I was in his absolute and total power. Disobedience was not merely a dangerous idea, but the very definition of insanity, given the potential downside. Even as a callow youth, I could see the logic of Pascal’s Wager:-), and I remain sympathetic to the compelling logic of the worldview, which embraces the idea of eternal rewards and punishments.As a twelve year old, I moved to South Africa. Quite a shocking change of climate, culture and religious milieu for a young Irish lad, and it gave me an opportunity afforded very few. I was suddenly forced to switch perspectives, from being the citizen of a small country suffering some low key oppression at the hands of an overbearing neighbour (the UK), to becoming part of a ruling minority (the whites) participating in the markedly more robust oppression of a powerless majority. I was also exposed to my first real brush with protestant Christian sects, and frankly, I rather liked it.The emphasis on salvation through the acceptance of Jesus, as opposed to the catholic obsession with penance, categories of sin and more than a hint of real world mortification of the flesh, struck me as a far more palatable and internally consistent message. Yes we were all sinners, but Jesus had taken that sin on our behalf. Plus, there were no priests, and I had always considered these grotesque elderly virgins rather creepy. Some kind of sixth sense I suppose.During the next 5 years or so, I went through, what for this audience is I expect, a fairly familiar evangelical cycle of salvation and backsliding. Often my returns to the fold were followed by speaking in tongues, periods of intensely emotional joy, laughing in the spirit and the like. Sometimes there was nothing, my re-dedications were followed by little more than an intellectual sense of having put things back in order, and that on totting up the balance sheet, I was once again, out of the red. Those catholic habits die hard:-) Other than an aggressive attempt by a Mormon friend to recruit me (I simply found the book of Mormon too silly, even then), and a bit of a close call with 7th day Adventists (I found their intense attention to detail rather compelling), things rolled along fairly smoothly. I was largely at peace with my faith, and seriously considering the ministry. At the age of 18 I finished school, worked for about a year as computer operator in Johannesburg, and then began my two year stint of national service in the South African Defence Force, sometime in 1984. After a fairly grueling 3 months of basic training, I was stationed in a grim, dusty little support battalion, 7th South African Infantry, in Palaborwa. Palaborwa was reputed to have two seasons, summer and hell. It was too close to the equator, much too close to Mozambique and in practical terms, as far from the real world (air conditioning, the opposite sex and beer) as the dark side of the moon. The career military in Palaborwa had little but contempt for conscripts like myself, thousands of flabby, wide eyed innocents, all harbouring in their lethal little breasts, a one in one thousand chance of loosing an eye, a hand or worse still, a whole staff sergeant to the statistical certainty of training accidents to come. To the further disgust of the professionals, almost all of whom were Afrikaners, most of us weren’t even South Africans, but force naturalized colonials. An imaginative government attempt to beef up the, even then, rapidly shrinking white demographic, had resulted in the conscription of thousands of pale English speaking foreigners. Plenty of whom could barely squeak out so much as a “Hoe gaan dit?” in Afrikaans. You get the picture;-)After school, in the run up to my 2 years in the SADF, and intermittently when I had leave from the army, I attended a mega church in Johannesburg called “Christian City”. You know the type. High energy speakers, tithes (expected but not obligatory), the prosperity gospel, lots of bible courses (for a fee), speaking in tongues, slaying in the spirit, a pretty good Christian bookshop where I recall buying and being so impressed by Josh McDowell’s “Evidence that Demands a Verdict”, that I later splashed out on the rather unimaginatively named sequel “More Evidence that Demands a Verdict”. They also had really well organized home churches and study groups. This church and my experience with the narrow slice of protestant Christendom I had been exposed to, left me with a real sense of how chosen “we” were. At this time by “we” I meant people who explicitly had been born again, baptized in the Holy Spirit (with signs mind you) and who harboured a sympathetic contempt for anyone that hadn’t. Happily, my time in the SADF changed that rather bigoted view.I had the incredible good luck (I considered it divine intervention at the time) to be assigned as a chaplains clerk. This was a very cushy number which required no dangerous shooting, throwing of grenades or any of that very unpleasant, “running while being shot at”. Basically, my duties were to keep the office tidy, carry hymn books, furniture and religious accoutrement back and forth to services, in short to be the chaplains general dogs body in all things. The chaplain was a Dominee (the Afrikaans term for pastor) of the Dutch Reformed Church. A rather austere denomination, very heavy on the Calvin, light on the "Jesus Loves you" and lumbered with the weird, disquieting and quite logical doctrine of predestination. However the Dominee himself was a wonderful man, a great Christian and it showed. He may not have had the fireworks of the spirit that I had come to expect from all true believers, but he certainly had the fruits in abundance. This, I suspect, is where it all began to go off the rails. Ironic really, that the witness of such a humble Christian gentleman would sow the seeds of “destruction”. The thing was that I could see the fruits of the spirit, love, patience etc. the really good stuff, in all sorts of Christians. Even Christians that my pastor back in Christian City suggested were lost. I had been fed a fairly exclusive message for years, told that the embrace of that message should show in some tangible way, but reality was not stacking up like that. In fact, I began to see the simplistic “believe and receive” Christians of my old church as superficial and shallow, downright materialistic, when contrasted with the Lutherans, Anglicans and Catholics I had spent the last rather grueling two years with.My stint in the SADF had also left me searching for a lot of philosophical answers on the subject of justice. Apartheid was alive and well in the SA of 1984, and the ideological incompatibility with the words of Jesus simply became more starkly obvious during my military service. My religious convictions although still strong and integral to my person at the time, were struggling to understand how an overwhelmingly Christian nation could endorse, justify and actively champion the cruelties being visited upon the majority black population, who were also Christians.While chewing on these inconsistencies, I was drawn to the idea that true Christians appeared in all denominations, and that the specific dogma was secondary. Simply “accepting Jesus as your saviour” wasn’t producing noticeably better Christians, and I was bumping into a steady stream of people who had never “been born again” in any kind of ostentatious way, yet even with long term and intimate exposure to them (the army will do that!) they still seemed objectively “better” people. There had to be something else, something indefinable in the mix, not reducible to some cold scriptural formula. In the late 80’s I left South Africa and returned to Europe, specifically the UK. I still had in the back of my mind that ministry was what I wanted to do, and after about a year I made contact with a Christian group I had first seen in school in SA in the early 80’s. The group was Covenant Players (http://www.covenantplayers.org/), their explicitly stated mission was to communicate the Lord Jesus Christ through the medium of drama. This may well have been the best 4 years of my life. I was assigned to Germany where I quickly picked up the language, and within 2 years was running my own unit. People loved us, our message and the medium. I was good at the drama, as well as the business side of things and my unit became one of the first to use a computer. A ludicrous IBM 286 with an absurdly small amount of RAM, and a 10 MB hard “card”. I used to lug this beast around with me in a suitcase, but all of our correspondence was done on time, and we kept in such regular contact with our “customers”, that we had a steady stream of bookings generated by these mass mailing contacts alone. I met my wife in Covenant Players, and when my daughter was born, the unit in Ireland drove us home from the hospital in their van. Although both of us have now rejected theism generally, and Christianity in specific, we both look back very fondly on our time in ministry, and the many wonderful Christians we met.All through this period, my continued disappointment with simplistic evangelical Christianity, interaction with every Christian denomination under the sun, as well as positive interactions with Mormons, JW and even the occasional Muslim, deepened my conviction that God must accept all monotheists on whatever cultural terms the context of their upbringing provides. If “accepting Jesus” was the critical formula, did it really stand to reason, that someone born in Utah or Teheran had exactly the same chance at salvation as someone born into the family of a Baptist minister? This seemed absurd, the more so given the terrible penalty of making the wrong choice.It gradually seeped into my consciousness, that Pascal’s Wager was not a binary proposition at all, that given the thousands of confident religions, sects and cults worldwide, the choices were in fact functionally infinite. I wrestled with the idea that there had to be some way of giving everyone an equal shot at salvation, so to speak. Either that or the penalty couldn’t possibly be as severe as alleged. The concept, “accept Jesus as your saviour” had been (re-?) formulated during the reformation, with the very narrow horizon of European civilization in mind, and as a counterpoint to the Catholic Churches focus on sin. When I examined this dogma against the broader sweep of history and geography, it simply seemed vacuous, even cruel, and the attempts to explain this clear injustice were uniformly inadequate. I considered the thousands of years of Chinese history for example, utterly untouched by Christianity until perhaps two hundred years ago, or the South and North American civilizations that have risen and fallen in the last 2000 years, collectively, billions of people that lived and died without ever hearing a single solitary syllable about Jesus. That is assuming you don’t accept the book of Mormon.A particularly important fork in the road, was the thought that every theist on the planet makes very similar claims, appeals and arguments, just for a different set of speculations. They are frequently certain they have evidence, reason and of course God on their side. To me, they all began to look very, very similar, including my own Christian convictions. How could the different perspectives, dogmas and claims be objectively evaluated? Not by reason, all the faiths and sects have what they consider excellent reasons for what they believe, and consider everyone else’s reasons insufficient. If you think I’m exaggerating, try arguing with a Muslim (they are all over the internet) about the inerrancy of the Quran or with a 7th Day Adventist, Mormon of Jehovah’s Witness regarding some of their more curious doctrinal claims.Not by personal experience, people from all faiths and sects tell a steady stream of anecdotes about their interaction with the transcendent, miraculous and indefinable. I have a few such stories myself! To this day, the adherents of Hindu gurus will tell breathlessly of healings, resurrections and the occasional virgin birth. If I dismiss these claims without a thought today, what am I to make of similar claims of a far more illiterate, credulous and above all, distant age?Not by example, all faiths have a history of angels and demons in their ranks. How then? How could one be certain that a particular set of religious Dogma was the correct one? My changing world view, the recognition that people were people everywhere eventually overwhelmed the capacity of my religious convictions to adapt. No matter how you examined it, either religious dogma was overtly unjust, and frequently absurd, or so denuded as to be worthless. This thought process percolated in the background for a few years, and then along came the Iraq war. My sense of injustice was ignited by the in your face lies and the outrage that this war embodies, and that George Bush personifies. His cynical duping of the religious right in the US, made me think anew about the state of my own religious life. I began to aggressively investigate the details of my faith; I read books on comparative religion, church history, cosmology and evolution. I read Dawkins, Harris and Dennett, the unholy trinity of Atheism. I basically took a wrecking ball to the superstructure of ignorance that my faith depended on, and the whole thing came crashing down. Worse still, I realized I’d been duped as well, betrayed by people I expected to be honest with me. Especially that idiot Josh McDowell (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/newetdav.html) , I had genuinely thought that his books had informed me; when all they had done was to crudely inoculate me against actual knowledge.The deep dishonesty of some Christian apologists, for example the cynical, relentless, and decades long conflation of the scientific definition of “theory” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory), with that of it’s everyday common usage, simply reinforced my sense that religions were run and directed, for the most part, by charlatans and confidence tricksters. In defense, I developed a method for assessing the truth (with a lower case t) probability of any given assertion. In it’s simplest form, what proportion of relevant experts endorse assertion X? For example, scientific disciplines accept particular facts as given, only when a broad majority in the relevant discipline accepts them as such. Thus I weigh the position of astronomers vis a vis the ability of stars to predict future events, as of vastly greater value than the literally billions of people around the world that continue to give astrology credence. Ministers may be the relevant experts on theology or church history, but they are absolutely the wrong people to listen to on biology, cosmology and the like.I embraced the reality, that I can’t know everything, about everything, but I can, and have a responsibility to, inform myself about the consensus amongst the experts. In a world awash in information, opinion and bald faced lies, it is vital to have a methodology to make sense of it all. This works for me, but it has side effects that have proven lethal for my religious faith. In brief, the experts in all the scientific disciplines that have any bearing on the question “Where did we come from?”, uniformly dismiss the literalist interpretations of all the major religions as nonsense, grouping them under the dismissive heading of “not even wrong”. A small minority (some 10%) of the world’s most prestigious scientists (http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html ) do have a recognizable religious faith, but it’s generally a pretty ephemeral thing. For balance, http://www.findingdarwinsgod.com/excerpt/index.html, I include someone who seems to manage this feat, but they do appear to be a minority. That’s how I got here, through decades long contact with lots of good Christians, followed by a 5 year force feeding of GWB’s criminal policies. GWB is possibly to the Christian faith what cholesterol is to the heart, it won’t kill you overnight, but it’ll get you in the end:-)
Comments are most certainly welcome here.
The following is a guest post by BrianC, who has been posting comments on a previous post from an atheist perspective. I have invited him to tell us about his personal voyage of self-discovery:
Mark has very graciously suggested that a number of posts explaining how I got from bible believing Christian to my current state of apostasy, might by instructive, or at the very least serve as a terrible warning of what to avoid, for the true believer. It’s a longish story, but I hope sufficiently novel to keep most readers engaged. I grew up in the republic of Ireland in the 1960’s and 70’s, running the entire obligatory catholic obstacle course, of communion, confirmation and lectures on the specific and exquisite methods of torture, God had in mind for the non, or wayward roman catholic. This left me with a fairly clear idea of where I stood in relation to God. He was THE BOSS and I was in his absolute and total power. Disobedience was not merely a dangerous idea, but the very definition of insanity, given the potential downside. Even as a callow youth, I could see the logic of Pascal’s Wager:-), and I remain sympathetic to the compelling logic of the worldview, which embraces the idea of eternal rewards and punishments.As a twelve year old, I moved to South Africa. Quite a shocking change of climate, culture and religious milieu for a young Irish lad, and it gave me an opportunity afforded very few. I was suddenly forced to switch perspectives, from being the citizen of a small country suffering some low key oppression at the hands of an overbearing neighbour (the UK), to becoming part of a ruling minority (the whites) participating in the markedly more robust oppression of a powerless majority. I was also exposed to my first real brush with protestant Christian sects, and frankly, I rather liked it.The emphasis on salvation through the acceptance of Jesus, as opposed to the catholic obsession with penance, categories of sin and more than a hint of real world mortification of the flesh, struck me as a far more palatable and internally consistent message. Yes we were all sinners, but Jesus had taken that sin on our behalf. Plus, there were no priests, and I had always considered these grotesque elderly virgins rather creepy. Some kind of sixth sense I suppose.During the next 5 years or so, I went through, what for this audience is I expect, a fairly familiar evangelical cycle of salvation and backsliding. Often my returns to the fold were followed by speaking in tongues, periods of intensely emotional joy, laughing in the spirit and the like. Sometimes there was nothing, my re-dedications were followed by little more than an intellectual sense of having put things back in order, and that on totting up the balance sheet, I was once again, out of the red. Those catholic habits die hard:-) Other than an aggressive attempt by a Mormon friend to recruit me (I simply found the book of Mormon too silly, even then), and a bit of a close call with 7th day Adventists (I found their intense attention to detail rather compelling), things rolled along fairly smoothly. I was largely at peace with my faith, and seriously considering the ministry. At the age of 18 I finished school, worked for about a year as computer operator in Johannesburg, and then began my two year stint of national service in the South African Defence Force, sometime in 1984. After a fairly grueling 3 months of basic training, I was stationed in a grim, dusty little support battalion, 7th South African Infantry, in Palaborwa. Palaborwa was reputed to have two seasons, summer and hell. It was too close to the equator, much too close to Mozambique and in practical terms, as far from the real world (air conditioning, the opposite sex and beer) as the dark side of the moon. The career military in Palaborwa had little but contempt for conscripts like myself, thousands of flabby, wide eyed innocents, all harbouring in their lethal little breasts, a one in one thousand chance of loosing an eye, a hand or worse still, a whole staff sergeant to the statistical certainty of training accidents to come. To the further disgust of the professionals, almost all of whom were Afrikaners, most of us weren’t even South Africans, but force naturalized colonials. An imaginative government attempt to beef up the, even then, rapidly shrinking white demographic, had resulted in the conscription of thousands of pale English speaking foreigners. Plenty of whom could barely squeak out so much as a “Hoe gaan dit?” in Afrikaans. You get the picture;-)After school, in the run up to my 2 years in the SADF, and intermittently when I had leave from the army, I attended a mega church in Johannesburg called “Christian City”. You know the type. High energy speakers, tithes (expected but not obligatory), the prosperity gospel, lots of bible courses (for a fee), speaking in tongues, slaying in the spirit, a pretty good Christian bookshop where I recall buying and being so impressed by Josh McDowell’s “Evidence that Demands a Verdict”, that I later splashed out on the rather unimaginatively named sequel “More Evidence that Demands a Verdict”. They also had really well organized home churches and study groups. This church and my experience with the narrow slice of protestant Christendom I had been exposed to, left me with a real sense of how chosen “we” were. At this time by “we” I meant people who explicitly had been born again, baptized in the Holy Spirit (with signs mind you) and who harboured a sympathetic contempt for anyone that hadn’t. Happily, my time in the SADF changed that rather bigoted view.I had the incredible good luck (I considered it divine intervention at the time) to be assigned as a chaplains clerk. This was a very cushy number which required no dangerous shooting, throwing of grenades or any of that very unpleasant, “running while being shot at”. Basically, my duties were to keep the office tidy, carry hymn books, furniture and religious accoutrement back and forth to services, in short to be the chaplains general dogs body in all things. The chaplain was a Dominee (the Afrikaans term for pastor) of the Dutch Reformed Church. A rather austere denomination, very heavy on the Calvin, light on the "Jesus Loves you" and lumbered with the weird, disquieting and quite logical doctrine of predestination. However the Dominee himself was a wonderful man, a great Christian and it showed. He may not have had the fireworks of the spirit that I had come to expect from all true believers, but he certainly had the fruits in abundance. This, I suspect, is where it all began to go off the rails. Ironic really, that the witness of such a humble Christian gentleman would sow the seeds of “destruction”. The thing was that I could see the fruits of the spirit, love, patience etc. the really good stuff, in all sorts of Christians. Even Christians that my pastor back in Christian City suggested were lost. I had been fed a fairly exclusive message for years, told that the embrace of that message should show in some tangible way, but reality was not stacking up like that. In fact, I began to see the simplistic “believe and receive” Christians of my old church as superficial and shallow, downright materialistic, when contrasted with the Lutherans, Anglicans and Catholics I had spent the last rather grueling two years with.My stint in the SADF had also left me searching for a lot of philosophical answers on the subject of justice. Apartheid was alive and well in the SA of 1984, and the ideological incompatibility with the words of Jesus simply became more starkly obvious during my military service. My religious convictions although still strong and integral to my person at the time, were struggling to understand how an overwhelmingly Christian nation could endorse, justify and actively champion the cruelties being visited upon the majority black population, who were also Christians.While chewing on these inconsistencies, I was drawn to the idea that true Christians appeared in all denominations, and that the specific dogma was secondary. Simply “accepting Jesus as your saviour” wasn’t producing noticeably better Christians, and I was bumping into a steady stream of people who had never “been born again” in any kind of ostentatious way, yet even with long term and intimate exposure to them (the army will do that!) they still seemed objectively “better” people. There had to be something else, something indefinable in the mix, not reducible to some cold scriptural formula. In the late 80’s I left South Africa and returned to Europe, specifically the UK. I still had in the back of my mind that ministry was what I wanted to do, and after about a year I made contact with a Christian group I had first seen in school in SA in the early 80’s. The group was Covenant Players (http://www.covenantplayers.org/), their explicitly stated mission was to communicate the Lord Jesus Christ through the medium of drama. This may well have been the best 4 years of my life. I was assigned to Germany where I quickly picked up the language, and within 2 years was running my own unit. People loved us, our message and the medium. I was good at the drama, as well as the business side of things and my unit became one of the first to use a computer. A ludicrous IBM 286 with an absurdly small amount of RAM, and a 10 MB hard “card”. I used to lug this beast around with me in a suitcase, but all of our correspondence was done on time, and we kept in such regular contact with our “customers”, that we had a steady stream of bookings generated by these mass mailing contacts alone. I met my wife in Covenant Players, and when my daughter was born, the unit in Ireland drove us home from the hospital in their van. Although both of us have now rejected theism generally, and Christianity in specific, we both look back very fondly on our time in ministry, and the many wonderful Christians we met.All through this period, my continued disappointment with simplistic evangelical Christianity, interaction with every Christian denomination under the sun, as well as positive interactions with Mormons, JW and even the occasional Muslim, deepened my conviction that God must accept all monotheists on whatever cultural terms the context of their upbringing provides. If “accepting Jesus” was the critical formula, did it really stand to reason, that someone born in Utah or Teheran had exactly the same chance at salvation as someone born into the family of a Baptist minister? This seemed absurd, the more so given the terrible penalty of making the wrong choice.It gradually seeped into my consciousness, that Pascal’s Wager was not a binary proposition at all, that given the thousands of confident religions, sects and cults worldwide, the choices were in fact functionally infinite. I wrestled with the idea that there had to be some way of giving everyone an equal shot at salvation, so to speak. Either that or the penalty couldn’t possibly be as severe as alleged. The concept, “accept Jesus as your saviour” had been (re-?) formulated during the reformation, with the very narrow horizon of European civilization in mind, and as a counterpoint to the Catholic Churches focus on sin. When I examined this dogma against the broader sweep of history and geography, it simply seemed vacuous, even cruel, and the attempts to explain this clear injustice were uniformly inadequate. I considered the thousands of years of Chinese history for example, utterly untouched by Christianity until perhaps two hundred years ago, or the South and North American civilizations that have risen and fallen in the last 2000 years, collectively, billions of people that lived and died without ever hearing a single solitary syllable about Jesus. That is assuming you don’t accept the book of Mormon.A particularly important fork in the road, was the thought that every theist on the planet makes very similar claims, appeals and arguments, just for a different set of speculations. They are frequently certain they have evidence, reason and of course God on their side. To me, they all began to look very, very similar, including my own Christian convictions. How could the different perspectives, dogmas and claims be objectively evaluated? Not by reason, all the faiths and sects have what they consider excellent reasons for what they believe, and consider everyone else’s reasons insufficient. If you think I’m exaggerating, try arguing with a Muslim (they are all over the internet) about the inerrancy of the Quran or with a 7th Day Adventist, Mormon of Jehovah’s Witness regarding some of their more curious doctrinal claims.Not by personal experience, people from all faiths and sects tell a steady stream of anecdotes about their interaction with the transcendent, miraculous and indefinable. I have a few such stories myself! To this day, the adherents of Hindu gurus will tell breathlessly of healings, resurrections and the occasional virgin birth. If I dismiss these claims without a thought today, what am I to make of similar claims of a far more illiterate, credulous and above all, distant age?Not by example, all faiths have a history of angels and demons in their ranks. How then? How could one be certain that a particular set of religious Dogma was the correct one? My changing world view, the recognition that people were people everywhere eventually overwhelmed the capacity of my religious convictions to adapt. No matter how you examined it, either religious dogma was overtly unjust, and frequently absurd, or so denuded as to be worthless. This thought process percolated in the background for a few years, and then along came the Iraq war. My sense of injustice was ignited by the in your face lies and the outrage that this war embodies, and that George Bush personifies. His cynical duping of the religious right in the US, made me think anew about the state of my own religious life. I began to aggressively investigate the details of my faith; I read books on comparative religion, church history, cosmology and evolution. I read Dawkins, Harris and Dennett, the unholy trinity of Atheism. I basically took a wrecking ball to the superstructure of ignorance that my faith depended on, and the whole thing came crashing down. Worse still, I realized I’d been duped as well, betrayed by people I expected to be honest with me. Especially that idiot Josh McDowell (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/newetdav.html) , I had genuinely thought that his books had informed me; when all they had done was to crudely inoculate me against actual knowledge.The deep dishonesty of some Christian apologists, for example the cynical, relentless, and decades long conflation of the scientific definition of “theory” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory), with that of it’s everyday common usage, simply reinforced my sense that religions were run and directed, for the most part, by charlatans and confidence tricksters. In defense, I developed a method for assessing the truth (with a lower case t) probability of any given assertion. In it’s simplest form, what proportion of relevant experts endorse assertion X? For example, scientific disciplines accept particular facts as given, only when a broad majority in the relevant discipline accepts them as such. Thus I weigh the position of astronomers vis a vis the ability of stars to predict future events, as of vastly greater value than the literally billions of people around the world that continue to give astrology credence. Ministers may be the relevant experts on theology or church history, but they are absolutely the wrong people to listen to on biology, cosmology and the like.I embraced the reality, that I can’t know everything, about everything, but I can, and have a responsibility to, inform myself about the consensus amongst the experts. In a world awash in information, opinion and bald faced lies, it is vital to have a methodology to make sense of it all. This works for me, but it has side effects that have proven lethal for my religious faith. In brief, the experts in all the scientific disciplines that have any bearing on the question “Where did we come from?”, uniformly dismiss the literalist interpretations of all the major religions as nonsense, grouping them under the dismissive heading of “not even wrong”. A small minority (some 10%) of the world’s most prestigious scientists (http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html ) do have a recognizable religious faith, but it’s generally a pretty ephemeral thing. For balance, http://www.findingdarwinsgod.com/excerpt/index.html, I include someone who seems to manage this feat, but they do appear to be a minority. That’s how I got here, through decades long contact with lots of good Christians, followed by a 5 year force feeding of GWB’s criminal policies. GWB is possibly to the Christian faith what cholesterol is to the heart, it won’t kill you overnight, but it’ll get you in the end:-)
Comments are most certainly welcome here.
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