If you were ever a theist...

[Pat Mustard]

As a Deist,  I tried my best to reason myself into morality. I felt like I could not know a lot of things, being blurry, but even if I felt something was wrong but didn't know it to be wrong, as long as there was no clear indication it was, I was free to do it if I desired so.

MK as a muslim you are not a deist, you are a theist. I'm assuming that you're not living in the middle east after writing that statement, though, because to say something like that in a muslim ruled country is enough to get you killed gruesomely for apostasy.

But it brings a larger point to bear. How are we supposed to accept your beliefs as true when you yourself don't understand them nor can you verbalise them properly?

[Pat Mustard]

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a Christian at work one day, we were in the kitchen and the topic of belief came up, and he said something that I thought was poignant. He said that back when Jesus walked the earth, and performed miracles right in front of people's faces, many still didn't believe that He was of a supernatural realm. They still scoffed, and many didn't follow Him. Some did follow Him, but many didn't. And He was right there, in their midst. Now, this time last year and for a few years, I didn't really believe that Jesus existed as what the NT states as such. For me, I felt Jesus may have existed, but as a human...historically. Perhaps. And then I even let all that go, and didn't give much thought to it all. 

I can almost guarantee you people didn't scoff at Jesus as you say, for one simple reason. The Jesus of the bible never existed.

I'll give you my pet supposition as to what happened: The original Yeshua was a leader in one of the Pharisee, or maybe even Sicarii (who were essentially an even more radical offshoot of the Pharisees) groups in opposition to Roman and Antipater rulers of Iudea. My supposition that his death actually came about because he was planning a rebellion (may never have happened given the small size of his group and lack of his notability) against the Antipater regime who were ruling Iudea as clients of Rome, found out and tried under Jewish law*. His followers who weren't killed were moping around for a few years as a dejected and defeated group until Saul of Tarsus, spotting a gap in the market for his own personal gain, decided to fuse the Jewish god and messianic tradition with the Hellenistic miracle worker tradition and came up with Jesus Christ son of god and redeemer of man as a way to exploit others for profit^.

My reasoning for this is a) the nature of the messianic figure in Jewish mythology, an earthly human ruler come to restore the Jews to power in their promised land (if you look at the most prominent of all the messiahs Simon bar Kochba, this is abundantly clear), b) the descriptions of him in the earliest writings available to us, which pretty clearly paint him as cleaving most closely to the ultra-orthodox Phariseeic (can anybody tell me how to turn the noun Pharisee into an adjective?) views about judaism (it is only with John, the last gospel, written by a clear antisemite that the association with judaism is killed), c) the opposition that Saul himself had from the Jerusalem branch of the cult which contained the people who actually knew Yeshua and what he was, d) the existence within christianity from the start of groups like the Ebionites who retained their judaism while accepting Yeshua as a messiah, and e) the way the bible itself is written. Leaving aside the massive historical and geographical errors within the four books, the bits which describe him as fulfilling prophecy are clearly written by those who didn't understand judaism and were simply cherry picking old prophecies regardless of how they fit or whether they were previously fulfilled (for example the virgin birth mythos in Matthew was referring to a propechy in Isiah which clearly referred to an invasion that was happening back then, and essentially said "if this young pregnant woman gives birth and calls her son Immanuel (god is with us) then god will banish the invaders from the kingdom of Judea before the child leaves infancy, an event which came to pass according to Isiah).

For those reasons I cannot accept that the story of a divine Jesus to be anything but either a legend or a deliberate lie (even if, in all likelihood my pet conjecture is wrong, the bible itself is too confused and self-contradictory to be anything but a tissue of untruth).

*Which is acknowledged by even the four gospels themselves, it was the Sanhedrin who tried Jesus before turning him over to Pilate. If this happened in reality what Pilate would have done was "you tried him, you found him guilty under your law, you kill him". Hence, I find the crucifixion story to be utterly implausible, if Jesus died at the hand of authority it was under jewish law, and he would have either been stoned or hanged from a dead tree, not crucified, a punishment under Roman law for those deemed to have rebelled against Rome.

^Which is why I get annoyed at descriptions of Saul as stupid. To my mind he was an intensely clever, yet immoral man. He was able to create a world religion out of a tissue of cloth, yet it was all for personal gain (well, of course, the whole point of organised religious structure is to enrich and assure the power of those at the top and ensure that the plebeians are kept in their place).

[Mystic]

As a Deist,  I tried my best to reason myself into morality. I felt like I could not know a lot of things, being blurry, but even if I felt something was wrong but didn't know it to be wrong, as long as there was no clear indication it was, I was free to do it if I desired so.

MK as a muslim you are not a deist, you are a theist. I'm assuming that you're not living in the middle east after writing that statement, though, because to say something like that in a muslim ruled country is enough to get you killed gruesomely for apostasy.

But it brings a larger point to bear. How are we supposed to accept your beliefs as true when you yourself don't understand them nor can you verbalise them properly?

I meant while I was a Deist. I was a Deist for about five years.

[downbeatplumb]

If I had religious experiences I'd be more befuddled than converted. I wonder why we humans use such experiences to jump to wild conclusions about reality.

Is it all that wild to think there could be a supernatural force behind the universe? Not that wild, to me. lol

What is he supernatural and how does it work? All you seem to be doing is replacing rational thought with preferring stories. Ghost stories, and tales about zombies are good, but you should never confuse them with stuff that actually happens.

[Pizza]

If you were ever a theist/believer, what led you to no longer believe? Not looking to preach, that’s not my thing and it’s against rules anyway, but just curious. I remember my own journey over the past few years with it all, and just thought it’d be interesting to hear your ‘stories’ if you were once believers before identifying as an atheist. 

I can't remember if I replied to this or not.  I stop being a Christian theist over seven years ago. I think the problem of suffering, the divine hiddenness, lack of strong evidence made me an atheist and secular; however, I do flip back and forth between atheism and secular pantheism.

[Excited Penguin]

If you were ever a theist/believer, what led you to no longer believe? Not looking to preach, that’s not my thing and it’s against rules anyway, but just curious. I remember my own journey over the past few years with it all, and just thought it’d be interesting to hear your ‘stories’ if you were once believers before identifying as an atheist. 

I can't remember if replied to this or not.  I stop being a Christian theist over seven years ago. I think the problem of suffering, the divine hiddenness, lack of strong evidence made me an atheist; however, I do flip back and forth between atheism and pantheism.

Can't help but notice how ridiculous that is. Pantheism - failure of language. That's all.

[robvalue]

There's a big difference between saying there might be a supernatural realm, and saying that not only is there one but you know things about it.

[Excited Penguin]

There's a big difference between saying there might be a supernatural real, and saying that not only is there one but you know things about it.

Yeah, not really. Both are impossible by definition.

[Pizza]

I can't remember if replied to this or not.  I stop being a Christian theist over seven years ago. I think the problem of suffering, the divine hiddenness, lack of strong evidence made me an atheist; however, I do flip back and forth between atheism and pantheism.

Can't help but notice how ridiculous that is. Pantheism - failure of language. That's all.

Which is why I call myself an atheist and not a pantheist. It's funny how many atheists buy into Christian views about gods. Weird. If I wanted to mindfuck a Christian using the ontological argument, I'd just say their god isn't the greatest conceivable being, the pantheistic god is. Why? Because the pantheistic god is the sum of all existing things. It doesn't get any greater than that.

[Excited Penguin]

No, the pantheistic god is nothing but a failed synonym of the word universe. Why would you use an argument that is faulty to begin with? Don't answer that, it's rhetorical.