Hi, I'm a Christian. Help Me Disprove My Religion!

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Hey everyone! I'm sorry it's taken me forever to respond. I'd also like to sincerely thank you all for replying. You have been incredibly helpful. I'll respond to a few of you folks below, but I've gotta say, you've given me plenty of information. I'm not sure I'll be able to respond to it all. Again, thank you all.

---

I'm obviously too late to jump in on any serious basis, since others have done an excellent job of laying more than enough to chew and digest, on your intellectual "plate". I won't add too many more "you should consider" elements.

What got me out of religion was being lied to by my church leaders (and the books they handed me, when I inquired about it) about the nature of science, what we know through science about life and the universe, and some of the fundamental social teachings about humanity and our history. I wound up going to school to become a biologist, so if there are questions you wish you ask in the field of Creationism/Evolution, you're welcome to PM me if I don't respond to a question posted, in here or elsewhere.

The only thing I'll leave you to consider is this. You have already been threatened with hellfire (oh, so politely, but nevertheless threats) by the Christians here who responded to your questions. And yet, all the atheists have done is answered questions you asked. At no point will one of us say we'd be upset if you stayed a Christian, nor will we try to tell you there's some reason you must become an atheist. All we want is to see people asking good questions and learning how to rigorously think about those questions using logic (recognizing and avoiding fallacious thinking) and well-sourced information to form their premises (since logic operating on false premises can still reach false conclusions). Our opinion of you will not change based on what you end up deciding for yourself, provided you arrive at your conclusions by honest means, do not blind yourself to uncomfortable facts or those that disagree with your presuppositions, and treat nonbelievers as fairly and kindly as you have done so far.

The majority of atheists on this site went through the process of deconversion (as we call it), and we know how stressful and confusing it can be. Just keep trusting in your own power to reason, and I think you will find that, whatever you choose in the future, adherence to a rational mindset is very emotionally satisfying in the long run. It's more work, true, since you won't have any pre-digested answers, but that's part of what makes it so satisfying.

Good luck in your journey.

---

Thank you, RocketSurgeon. Even if all goes well, I'm going to have a lot to relearn, especially in regards to biology and evolution. I might take you up on that later, actually, if you don't mind. I don't expect you to explain all that I don't know to me (and there's so very much!), but if you could point me in the right direction, so that I can start learning what I wasn't taught, that would be fantastic.

Sorry, I'm not sure what to say other than thank you. Your post is incredibly... hopeful. It's nice to know that many of you went through questioning your religion (deconversion), and got out through reason.

I would be glad to talk to you about any question you may have. Even if people don't wind up agreeing with me, I like talking to honest questioners. We get a few of the less-honest types here, but I don't consider it a norm. By the way, I would like to point out to you that my fiancee is both a Christian (Methodist) and a professional evolutionary biologist, and she has no problem with being both. Evolution does not disprove Christianity, per se, but only a literal account of Genesis as the evangelicals/fundamentalists see it. I know that in the United States, where literal Genesis is a majority view, it's easy to forget that we are not the world, and the overwhelming percentage of Christians worldwide have zero issues with science. Many of the things you will learn from us will challenge your faith in God; science should not be one of them, or as I once joked to an undergrad when I was in my first year of grad school, "if science conflicts with your faith, you're doing one of them wrong".

As to questioning your faith, you should consider the advice President Thomas Jefferson gave, in a letter to his nephew:

"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."

Again, I understand that the way I'm going about this is somewhat absurd, trying to disprove what I haven't proven, but the posts from the people here have very much helped in that regard. It's much easier to disbelieve Christianity because I have firm reasons not to believe it, than to disbelieve due to a lack of reasons, even if the latter is a perfectly valid response.

I know you're talking to someone else, but I felt the need to quote this part back to you. The way you're going about it is not absurd. Trying to disprove every single thing you believe, all the time, is the entire basis of rational thinking, as Jefferson pointed out, above. There is nothing you should ever know to a certainty, nothing you should ever be unwilling to question. The moment you do, you have surrendered your reason. As philosopher David Hume said, "In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence."

I think the fact that you can recognize the difference between the two types of reasons for/against belief is a very, very good sign. When I was a Christian, I was taught that certainty was the only way to know something ("I have it on Good Authority from God, therefore I know!!!"), and that it was weakness to be uncertain, so it was hard for me to accept that uncertainty is a good thing, and that I should distinguish between withholding judgment on things I cannot prove and the things I can demonstrate to be false or unreasonable. It's why I call myself an "agnostic atheist". I believe that I must withhold judgment, philosophically, on the possibility of supreme being(s), so I am an agnostic, but I specifically disbelieve the god-stories I've heard so far in this world, including the particular one in which I was raised.

To leave you with a final quotation, as I like to do, I'll point you to a famous saying, among us heathens:

"We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." - Richard Dawkins

---

Arcturus - Speaking of questioning that which we believe at all times, and correcting what needs correcting... thank you for that information. It contained a couple of angles I had not previously considered. It doesn't radically shake my previous visualization of how the early church spread out (for instance, I have always assumed there was a church in Jerusalem prior to its destruction, for the reasons you mentioned), but I had not considered the implications of the pace of the writing.

I have always been fascinated by the "increasing godhood/miraculousness" of Jesus, as the telling of the tales moves forward in time, with Mark being in such sharp contrast to what we read in John, especially after reading Ehrman, so your post helps me to internalize that timeline. I will file all of that away in the "compare to other data as it filters in" file, and I offer you my thanks.