Tag Archives: evidence

Is There Any Lingering Theist In Me Five Years Later?

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It’s been almost five years since I very suddenly lost my faith and three years since I started identifying as an atheist. When I look back it amazes me that after twenty years of being an extremely sincere and genuine Christian that within a few years my brain would see all those things that I believed in so dearly as pure fable. And all the Christians can save their, ‘she wasn’t a true Christian’ nonsense. I absolutely was.

But I was pondering whether I ever have doubts about my atheism. Do I ever wonder if there is a god?  Does that question ever factor into my life at all anymore? I’m not completely closed to changing my mind about things. I value reality above all else. If some evidence convinced me that my current take on reality was wrong I’d be willing to shift my thinking. It’s reality after all! Not much point sticking my head in the sand about reality!

But even with that taken into consideration, no, the god question never factors into my thinking anymore. It would almost be like asking someone if they spend time wondering if Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is true and how that might impact their life. It just doesn’t factor in at all. And I’m not saying this to convince anyone of anything. I just find it interesting that once my brain realized that what is in front of me is reality, I just settled in to building my life around that and all the god stuff drifted away never to be seen or heard from again.

A big part of me can’t believe that just a short time ago I believed all that stuff. Was I a different person then? How could I have thought that was all true when now it seems so ridiculous and awful? The changes in my thinking have been so drastic, and looking at it impartially, that fascinates me! I guess once you choose a way of looking at the world and take on its methods of discerning truth, everything else follows. A Christian worldview told me a story and then told me that the Bible and prayer and visions were the way to discover truth (and threw in the threat of hell to make sure I didn’t doubt any of that). But once I pulled away from that and started demanding proof for the things people were telling me about the world, everything changed. Evidence is an amazing filter. Once I applied it my world changed – and for the better.

Mr. Deity: Creationism Is So Appropriate For Children

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You have to watch Bill Nye in this video before going on to the Mr. Deity video or you’ll miss the whole point.

 

Now you can watch the Mr. Deity version:

Following where the evidence leads … unless it contradicts my holy book.

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I really enjoyed this post by Nate over at Finding Truth:

This City Doesn’t Exist

Near the end he has a link to one of his previous posts that goes into much more detail:

Prophecy Part 6: Tyre

It reminded me of this post by Greta Christina:

A Selt-Referential Game of Twister: What Religion Looks Like From the Outside

That is a must-read for everyone.  But I want to focus on one particular part of it:

Scientists will certainly squabble with one another about the correct interpretation of data. But ultimately, they’re not just looking back at a pre-determined set of texts written thousands of years ago, and looking in their hearts to decide how to understand them. They’re looking out in the world. They’re gathering data, gathering evidence. They’re trying to figure out what’s true in the world by looking at the world, very carefully and very systematically, using a methodthat is specifically designed to screen out human bias and error as much as possible.

And when the data contradicting their opinion becomes too overwhelming, or the arguments against it become too compelling, they don’t twist their original opinion around in a series of apologetics explaining why the original opinion is still true and just needs to be interpreted correctly.

They say, “Huh. I guess I was wrong.”

Christians often claim that they use the same type of reasoning as I do but that we’ve just looked at the evidence and come to a different conclusion.  Even if I grant them this, let’s keep following the path.  Once they’ve decided that they think Christianity is the best explanation for the evidence (even though I think they are relying on extremely unreliable sources for their evidence) – then the next step is what I want to focus on.  The next step is that they now decide that the bible and its ideas are trustworthy and start building their worldview around this.  They start talking a lot about faith.

Greta says in her post:

 And one of the things science (or the philosophy of science, anyway) shows us about understanding life is that a theory that can’t possibly be falsified is useless. If a theory can be twisted around to explain absolutely anything that happens or that might conceivably happen, then it has no predictive power, no ability to help us understand how the world works.

Which brings me back to my point about the circularity of religious thinking. Take another look at Ebon Musing’s observation about theists, in his Theist’s Guide to Converting Atheists: “Ask any believer what would convince him he was mistaken and persuade him to leave his religion and become an atheist, and if you get a response, it will almost invariably be, ‘Nothing — I have faith in my god.’”

And ask yourself the question he asks: Is there anything that would convince you that you were mistaken? Is there any possible piece of evidence that could persuade you that God does not exist?

If the answer is “No” — if your answer is, “That’s what faith means, it means believing in God without demanding evidence and no matter what happens” — then you’ve pretty much proven my point. Religious belief is a snake eating its own tail. It’s a self-referential game of Twister. And it doesn’t help us understand or explain anything at all, about ourselves or the world.

So once you’ve decided that you trust the Bible as a reliable or even inerrant source of truth – you now have to live your life loyal to that book and its ideas.  Now you’ve crossed over from caring about the evidence to being required to explain away any evidence that contradicts the Bible or its claims.   As an atheist I am human and love to defend my current beliefs – we all do.  But I don’t claim loyalty to any book or person especially if that would require me to throw out or ignore evidence.

The Real Cost of Religious Faith

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This past weekend hubby and I attended our first atheist event.  I looked online and found a local group and we headed out to the pub on Friday.

This link was passed onto me by one of the people I met there and WOW is it good.  It just gets at the foundations of my issues with christianity (and any religion for that matter).  I wish every Christian would watch it but I know it wouldn’t come across to them in the same way it does to me now.

It also deals with my pet peeve lately which is the idea that christianity is a loving religion that is so inclusive.