RE: I'm afraid of being agnostic, I need help
January 3, 2015 at 12:50 pm
(This post was last modified: January 3, 2015 at 1:02 pm by watchamadoodle.)
TaosFlower, you should be patient and forgiving with yourself and your parents IMO. When these crazy ideas are taught to you as a child, it is really hard to erase them. Probably your parents were indoctrinated too, so their belief is understandable. I was raised as a Christian too.
Also, approaches that might help one person overcome the indoctrination might not work for another person. Just off the top of my head, I've heard these types of approaches:
- showing that various properties of God lead to a contradiction (the problem of evil, etc.).
- learning about the early history of Christianity (Jesus never claimed to be divine, Jesus predicted the end of the world in his lifetime, early Christians didn't believe anything like modern Christians, etc.)
- showing problems in the Bible (God commanding genocide, absurdity of the creation, flood, and exodus stories, primitive superstitious practices, etc.)
- learning about psychology
- learning about lack of evidence for prayers and other miracles
- ...
Also, approaches that might help one person overcome the indoctrination might not work for another person. Just off the top of my head, I've heard these types of approaches:
- showing that various properties of God lead to a contradiction (the problem of evil, etc.).
- learning about the early history of Christianity (Jesus never claimed to be divine, Jesus predicted the end of the world in his lifetime, early Christians didn't believe anything like modern Christians, etc.)
- showing problems in the Bible (God commanding genocide, absurdity of the creation, flood, and exodus stories, primitive superstitious practices, etc.)
- learning about psychology
- learning about lack of evidence for prayers and other miracles
- ...
