Resigned from Christianity after 23 years of journey
The beginning
I am a keen learner and enthusiast of knowledge. I and my siblings used to beg our parents to buy kids encyclopedias, popular science magazines. We do read comics of course, but our crave for knowledge was unique among our peers.
I was especially fascinated by nature and science from a very young age, and even considered to be a scientific researcher. I watched TV programs like “Cosmos” (Carl Sagan) and those programmes by Sir David Attenborough on science and nature.
I studied at a Christian found high school (Episcopal), and there were a number of Christians (teachers and students) keen on evangelizing the schoolmates. I never took things in the Bible seriously even though I knew a lot about the Bible. The religious atmosphere was great, and most of all, the teacher heading the religious part was a relatively open minded person, who would not judge or condemn other religions or faith like the Fundamentalist. Her openness and her approach in discussing topics by engagement took root in my mind.
I was brilliant in my study, doing debates and public speaking, because I had a good mind in making arguments and reasoning. I had a lot of hopes with my life.
The crisis and the conversion
However by the time I was 18, my family went into a deep crisis. My father and mother separated, my father’s business collapsed. I was greatly depressed, my grades fell, I missed classes, and I started to hang around with the “bad” kids. My father was the authoritarian type and control-freak, and my mother the submissive type, which infused some kind of inferiority feeling and lack of confidence in my mind; I found that my life was always in their tight grip, and I was not allowed to have my opinion, and there was no self-assurance given to my in my upbringing, which probably explained my receptiveness to Christianity at that time.
Those Christians in my high school approached me then. Maybe I was moved by the kind of caring they gave me, and that I needed so much emotional supported that I said yes to an invitation of a evangelizing meeting at a schoolmates church, and there I, “accepted Christ as my personal savior”.
Years of living in faith
Like many new converts to a faith, there was a kind euphoria that that somehow appeared to give me great peace and joy in the heart. I was so excited of my new found peace and faith that I immersed in it quickly, began witnessing the Gospel, sharing my experience around.
With my brain in overdrive, I zoomed pass the entire part of the “new Christian induction” that was used in my church. I attended all gatherings apart from Sunday services diligently, showed up on time, join the choir, volunteered to do a lot of things in the church.
In less than a year, I was almost indistinguishable from any veteran Christian. At the same time, I tucked my scientific and logical mind up to a little attic in my head until 15 years later and basked in the 2 year honeymoon with Christianity.
My church was a Baptist church that subscribed to Fundamentalist position, though I met a lot of Christians that took a more moderate position. The Fundamentalist view of the world affected my a lot. I held a very exclusive mindset that Christians and non-Christians could not work together, not to mention marrying. I also looked down on other faiths, fully convinced that Christianity is supreme. I stayed a Fundamentalist for at least 8 or 9 years, during which I invested in a lot of Christian books, Bible commentaries etc. I led Bible study groups, sing in the choir, and sometimes taught in Sunday schools. Every year we attended summer camps, where there would always be a section where the youths were called to “re-dedicated” themselves. People went forward, tearfully said they would dedicate their lives to Jesus etc.
Yet I noticed a kind of pattern. After a number of years in summer camps and seeing all these people re-dedicated themselves, those who “cried” the most were often the ones who “fell away” from the faith.
Likewise, those who appeared to be very fervent would also tend to disappear from church. It was then I figured that in many of the conversion cases, emotion was the main element, not faith or reason. I had no idea I was one of this kind.
The first glimpses of the dark side of Christianity
Before long I had my first brush with the dark side of Christianity. I led a small group and we had Bible studies. This mode of gathering was new to the church, and our church, a Baptist church, was trying to figure out the mode and decided that in order to get people to know each other, the groups would undergo re-organization every year. This was greatly resisted buy my group members because they would rather settle in a group for a longer term, and not to be forced to build new relationships. Temper flared when the church’s person who led this said this was the “church’s policy” and that we had to make up our minds or the church would do it for us. I asked the church not to split the groups and got a promise from the committee. Yet four months later I was shocked to find that they split the groups anyway. I was very disappointed. I realized that in a church, individual’s concern could be ignored for the convenience of church administration.
The second brush happened when I switched church. It was the pastor. He had disagreements with one of the deacons. The pastor back-stabbed that deacon in small Bible study groups, and he talked behind his back in front of the other deacons.
The church hired a woman minister, and that pastor felt threatened by the woman minister; she was popular among the senior members and initiated a lot of good programs. The pastor started to play games, intimidating the woman minister, and at some point, verbally abused her. The woman minister was very distressed, and her performance plummeted. There were so much double-talk, back-stabbing and suspicion around the church that the Sunday services was affected, the programs were affected and the volunteers morale were low (except for the youths, which the pastor had a lot of influence).
The situation got so bad that an ad-hoc member’s assembly was called; a group who were influenced by the pastor sat in and wanted to fire the woman minister. It almost went ugly but the deacons stopped it. The woman minister found she could not cooperate with that pastor and decided to resign.
It was at this point the deacons realized that they had to fire this male pastor because his action was a clear sign of his lack of integrity and deceitfulness. The ugly power struggles were all being talked about in the choir (the choir was the circle where many rumors and gossip happened).
The Net-Christian days and my first compromise
I majored in computer studies during my undergraduate studies and after I finished my degree, I was worked in the computer/software business. I was the early ones that used BBS, and later the Internet (using slow dial-up modems) to access the Internet, and there I was opened up to a world of different opinions of Christianity, challenges to my mind and reality of Christianity I never imagined.
I began discussing issues of Christianity and faith at newsgroups, went into heated debates with non-Christians (atheists, agnostic and ex-Christians).
During that newsgroup age, I had crisis, which I found out later that it was called cognitive dissonance.
It was common practice for Christian organizations, schools or para-church organizations then to employ almost exclusively Christians. They would require the applicant for a position to be a “born-again” Christian.
This sparked a heated debate on the newsgroup. Non-Christians accused Christians of discriminating non-Christians on the basis of religion and denied them opportunity for employment.. Initially I flatly denied the accusation, and used all my ammunitions to justify the kind of employment practices. I soon found myself at the corner when I was shown cases were Christians were employed by Buddhists organizations, but not otherwise.
I looked everywhere in the Internet to find reasons that Christian organizations were allowed to practice this kind of “discrimination”, yet I could not come up any strong arguments, legally or even from the Bible (except a verse in Leviticus that prohibits two different animals from carrying the yoke).
Most other Fundamentalist would simply snap back at the non-Christians, quoting Bible verses the referring to passages of. However, I was not comfortable with this approach, we should be able to present our arguments clearly apart from pulling verses from the Bible; yet deep inside me I believed that faith should not matter that much for employment, as long as key posts are Christians. For example, a non-Christian could be an accountant for a Christian organization, or a non-Christian graphic designer or a general office clerk.
Arguments from Christians would claim that a non-Christian (accountant, clerk, whatever that may be) would draw anger from God because the service they rendered were “imperfect” because they some were from non-believers, or that the non-Christian account would not be as honest, or that they would compromise their effort to “glorify God” because one of them is a non-believer, even if that one is just a janitor. They believed that being a Christian can make so much different. My reason would not allow me to agree with that kind of argument. As long as that person followed the procedures, policies of the organization and behave well, why such a fuss with his religion? They could even take the change to evangelize!
Eventually after some struggle, I came to realize that if I could not found any sound argument, both on the Internet, the Bible and from logical reasoning, it was because that practice was wrong in nature. As much the “Truth” Christianity was claimed to be, you cannot use “Truth” to turn things that are inherently wrong to otherwise, and any attempt to do this is an abuse of our Bible and our teachings.
This feeling of cognitive dissonance aroused because I was trying to use the “Truth” to justify something which was wrong inherently, and I knew it. I then posted a message on the newsgroup saying that I renounced that position.
This was the beginning of the “end” of my Christian journey.
The Fundamentalist mindset
Here I would like to distract a bit and describe about how a Fundamentalist Christian mind worked.
If my mind worked like the one of a hard core Fundamentalist, I would ignore the fact that I could not find reasons or justifications.
I would turn a blind eye to the logical problems with the Christian’s reasoning, I would suppress my feeling of “cognitive dissonance”, because for a Fundamentalist, he/she already had the truth, and that because what they held had to be true, and truth must be defended, then all things against the truth “had to be wrong”, and that if he/she was not comfortable inside, it was the lack of faith, a temptation from Satan etc. (circular arguments, empty assertions etc.). In the end many Christians would respond with a quote from the Bible like “blessed are those who are persecuted because of my name” (Matt…) or (Cor???) or (Phil???).
I did not assumed that I had the truth as the Fundamentalist, probably because I was more influenced by the moderate Baptist position (which were non-creedal, and never presume they had the truth), this left a little gap in my mind that allowed me to use facts and reasoning out from the attic in my head from time to time. Yet when it comes to core part of the faith (Jesus’ birth and resurrection, the Flood, the salvation, Trinitarian God etc.), I blocked the logic and reasoning again.
The years of war with Fundamentalists
The Internet evolved, so was the Christian community and tools on the Internet. The text based newsgroup gave way to web-based forums, and many Christian organizations jumped on the band-wagon of the during the Internet boom, setting up web sites, and started discussion forums. They thought Internet was great to allow fellowship of Christians from all places.
There were three forums I regularly visited to post and discussed with others. One was called iShare, one was called CCFellow, the other called “Allen”.
CCFellow and Allen were dominated by Fundamentalist and in particular the hard core ones (Biblical inerrancy, literal interpretation, young-earth, anti-Catholicism, rapture and end of world etc).
At that time, forums used software that were a lot more primitive, so moderators could only delete posts but not banning accounts or barring IPs. At that time I spent time mostly on iShare, until I got to CCFellow. It was 2002, and several groups of Christians were locked in a heated debate regarding if Catholicism was a heresy. There were Catholics, Christians who regarded Catholicism as orthodox, and of course the hardcore Fundamentalists.
Initially the debates were still courteous, but as Catholics debunked one proof of heresy from the Fundamentalists after the other, the Fundamentalist got furious and started to play dirty.
They swarmed the discussion from with a lot of posts to bury counter arguments from Catholics and their sympathizers; they used all kinds of smear tactics, and posted those debunked arguments They also used multiple pseudonyms on the forum to make them appeared numerous (actually there are no more than five of them, about the same as the other side). The forum moderator was also a Fundamentalist, allowed those Fundamentalist participants to post articles that attacked the Catholics (and sympathizers) personally, posting those “proof of Catholic heresy” again and again (many of which contained false information), but when the Catholics and their sympathizers tried to respond, the moderator deleted their posts promptly.
I was not prepared for such kind of mean-spirited manner from my own camp, and immediately I “deflected” and fight the Fundamentalist alongside with the Catholics.
During that process, I need to muster sound arguments from both Christianity doctrinal aspects and historical aspect, so I started to read widely on different denominations (Episcopalism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Arminianism, Baptists etc). I realized that diversity (or confusion ?) of Christian understanding of the Christian faith, and that there were core dogmas as well as varieties of teachings.
Furthermore I found that many of the Fundamentalists / Evangelical teachings on sola fide, sola scriptura, salvation, end times, and justification etc. were not as biblical as they claimed. I found out that Fundamentalists cooked up many lies against Catholicism (that they removed books from the Bible, that they altered the Ten Commandments etc.) and that they distorted many of Catholics position.
After that incident in CCFellow, I realized I could no longer subscribe to the Fundamentalist position.
This fighting with the Fundamentalist lasted for at least 3 years. During the years at CCFellow, the Fundamentalist also used the forum as a launch pad of their attacks to Christians or organizations they saw as “heresy”, “Liberals” or “apostates”. In one instant, they posted an article accusing a university professor at the university’s school of theology of teaching people to pray to “God the Mother”. They took the professor’s word out of context and attacked that school of teaching heresy. When they posted the article, they used that school’s official email address. I promptly informed the head of that school, and the school responded by posting a statement denouncing the actions of those Fundamentalist. The Christian group hosting the forum apologized, the Fundamentalists stopped for a short while, then started their attacks again. At this moment, their shameless and mean-spirited manners was so appalling that the forum drew other in to start quarreling with the Fundamentalists, and the fight heated up. The organization running the forum decided to shut the forum down because they found that the whole situation was out of control.
In another battle ground at “Allen”, the fighting was as intense, some Christians were so frightened by the quarrel there that they moved to other forums, and before long that forum had to shutdown too.
The battle was repeated in one forum after another, scared the shit of all those Christian organizations - some forum posted articles accusing Dr. Billy Graham to be an apostate, some had death threats to those opposing Fundamentalist views. Those organizations running the forums might have decided that the Internet was too “rough” to be a place where faithful Christians could “fellowship” and be “edified”, and that the Internet was the place that caused wobbling Christians to stumble. They could no longer maintain the control as if it was in the church building. By 2004, only two or three open forums run by Christian organizations are online, but very few visitors.
At the time of writing of this article, which is 2008, no other Christian forum run by individual believers or organizations survived the “heat” when they accepted open membership. Those which operated exclusively for Christians (often Fundamentalists) were inactive with very few people visiting. The more active forums are moderated by both Christians and non-Christians, and hosted by private companies for commercial reasons.
For about 2 years, I followed the trails of these anti-Catholics around every Chinese forum.
There was one particular anti-Catholic (dubbed keyperson, also called himself “puritan” , “John Knox”, MandM, and a number of other names) that always tried to settle in forums and used it at his anti-Catholic launch pad. During the CCFellow days, he was the leader of the anti-Catholics.
At first Puritan displayed a very civilized demeanor and appeared to be reasonable and even loving. It was just a front, when everything went his ways.
When Catholics began to proof him wrong he started to “loose it”.
During the CCFellow days, it was also the time when the outrageous Catholic Church scandal (priest sexually molested boys) erupted. Puritan treated that scandal as his powerful ammunition to Catholics, and kept posting news clips about the scandal even 1 year after it was out of the news headlines. His tactics of “Red Herring” was so annoying that I devised a very nasty plan of revenge.
I secretly researched about clergy sexual abuse in the Protestant side, and gathered at least 30 or 40 such clippings, each involved a pastor, including cases from Campus Crusade and the Salvation Army. Then I posted all to the CCFellow forum with a report on clergy sexual abuse that was submitted to the Southern Baptist Convention.
This proved to be a terrible blow to him. Puritan must have had his perfect image of “orthodox, God fearing and Bible believing Fundamentalist” shattered, and remained silent for weeks before he re-emerged. He tried to counter my facts but he was no match to me.
Then my next blow came when I met him in another forum. I researched heavily on Bible canonicity, and found out about how the New Testament and Old Testament was evolved and the entire list of books was only official declared “Canon” (canonized) in the late 15th Century at the Council of Trent by the Catholic Church (contrary to the assumption that the books were there “from the beginning”).
I posted my detailed research, and again dealt another blow to him. Then I posted another on “sola scriptura”, and then some testimonials on Fundamentalist turning to Catholicism. These Catholic-friendly articles were all on my blog and were quoted by many Catholics to counter attacks from Fundamentalists by many Chinese speaking Catholics. For a while I really considered Catholicism because I loved the beauty of their liturgy.
After thought on the wars with Fundamentalists
During the times, I slowly understand the kind of Fundamentalist mindset and many thoughts emerge. I witnessed first hand what this kind of mindset could do to a persons’ integrity.
This is what I saw happening to them:
At first, a Fundamentalist would appear kind and courteous (just like those holding Bibles and knock on your door with a wide smile). They lives are upright, with high integrity. But as their views and beliefs were debunked one after another, their rigid Fundamentalist mindset created a strong internal conflict in them. Because they choose to defend their “treasured faith”, and that all of their sound arguments were out of the window, they mind started to be locked into an ideological vicious circle:
- I knew the truth (or I had the truth, whatever)
- They were non-believers, liberals, heretics, apostates, they did not have the truth
- So even they had facts, reasonable, used means with integrity they are still wrong
- Even if I used things that looked like a lie, unreasonable, illogical, and even without integrity, I am still with the truth
- To defend the truth I had to use any means
This kind of reasoning somehow motivated them to use tricks that get meaner and meaner, because they would rather compromise their own intellectual integrity than to suffer the humiliation of admitting that they were wrong. This resulted in the breakdown of their integrity. They no longer capable of loving the enemies, they would speak bitter words of hatred and curse. They turned into Crusaders.
First they would post things with false facts, and then mud-smearing, then back stabbing (they found out which church I attended, and send emails to my church’s email address), flooding the forum to drown out other articles, assumed multiple identities to make it appeared they were the majority, and when they had the authority to delete posts or bar participants in a discussion forum, they used it like some repressive regimes against dissidents.
One case was that I met up with Puritan in another forum that supports deletion of membership, Puritan somehow got the post of administrator, and he barred my membership account, deleted all my posts, put up a notice that basically turn the facts about what happened upside down. This process gave Puritan a inflated self-esteem, he felt he was more powerful than me, he felt a kind of gratitude and satisfaction, as though he won a Crusade for God. The forum went back to “normal” with those “heretic posts” gone, and that served as a confirmation to his terrible tactics - he did it for God using these means, he won, he had “peace” in heart, the good Christian now had a place to share, this had got to be pleasing to God.
This is precisely the dark side of Fundamentalism: in the face of opposition, if they had the powers to crush their enemies, they would use it without hesitant, there is no “Love your enemy”, or that “love” comes after they crushed you. Look at the situation in USA, in those denominations taken over by Fundamentalists, the pattern is all the same.
The battle years with Fundamentalist gradually turned me to a moderate Evangelical, and somewhat leaning to the Liberal side.
In forums, I did not subscribe to common Christian myths (e.g. Darwin turned Christian at his death bed, Einstein was Christian, majority of scientists was Christian, there were tracks where human and dinosaurs walked side by side, the Noah’s Ark was found etc) and often was among the ones that debunked posts containing these lies the very moment they appeared. My action incited Fundamentalists, even some Evangelicals and conservative Christians, because I embarrassed them.
Similarly, when anti-Catholicism articles appeared, I refuted them without hesitation. I then earned the nickname of “the whore” (given to me by Puritan, of course), and gain reputation among forums as the very radical Christians with unorthodox views.
The gay rights controversy
During the same time as I fought the Fundamentalist, I also befriended a number of gay Christians on the forum. I was appalled by the hatred and hostility displayed by other Christians to them. The Fundamentalist and many Evangelicals wanted to stop those gay Christians from posting at the forum. I was a staunch believer in freedom of expression, and I opposed those Christians fiercely, making a lot of Evangelicals and caused a forum to shutdown again. I and one of the gay Christians became friends (he is now going after mysticism).
In 2005, a bill that would make discrimination based on sexual orientation an offense was out for public consultation (“SODO”, “Sexual Orientation Discrimination Ordinance”) in Hong Kong.
This started my new round of fight with conservative Christians. One para-Christian group called the Society of Truth and Light (STL, one that imports all right-winged, conservative views directly from their counterparts in USA). They published large ads on papers containing many false scientific research about homosexuality plus twisted cases in the West. I posted on public forums long articles reprimanding STL, again having heated debates with many Fundamentalists/Evangelicals. Many of my long articles were quoted by LGBT rights activists because I struck at those groups weakest points again – their lack of, cover up or distortion of facts about homosexuality (if it could be “straightened” and “typical cases of homosexuals persecuting Christians” etc).
During that year, a pastor befriended me. He was the kind of seeker sensitive pastor who does not agree with the “military-like” tactics of Hong Kong Christian right/conservative groups, and in particular STL. He preferred the “engagement” mode of helping homosexuals. He wrote some articles criticizing STL in newspapers. STL, unfortunately has a number of senior advisors coming from the denomination which the pastor belonged. About 6 months after he published his views on newspapers he was forced to leave his church (apparently the leadership of the denomination was angry when he embarrassed them). The whole thing was handled in a shadowy manner, the church who asked that pastor to leave even lied about the reason. Their cover was blown away when the pastor released the letter ordering him to resign, showing the deacons had lied public.
The whole Christian community was silent about this issue, allowing the church to lie. The Christian community (mainly evangelical) were just like any ideological groups, refusing to listen to facts and different opinions.
I was convinced then homosexuality is something similar to psychiatric diseases or of in-born nature, and that they were not morally wrong.
These events gradually changed me, I already thrown out Bible inerrancy, I thrown out "simple faith", I denied that homosexuality is a sin, it was only a matter of time before I thrown out the miracles, God creationism, etc.
This event made me decided that I had to cut my ties with Evangelicals and then I completed my transformation to a Liberal Christian, and that had not stopped.
Science – the antidote
By then, I picked up a lot of books about critical thinking, logical reasoning, different Christian doctrines, and finally I returned to my favorite – popular science.
At that time I traveled a lot in China. In China there were big bookstores, the equivalent of Barnes & Nobles in USA. The books were well printed and most of all, dirt cheap. I was drawn to the section of popular science, and picked up 3 or 4 books at every visit there.
I enjoyed those reading so much that I gradually rekindled my love of science.
The war against “Ark finders”
During the same years of SODO (2004 – 2005), there was another event in the Christian circles of Hong Kong. A Christian media group called Media Evangelism (“ME”) announced in the fall of 2004 that they had found the remains of the Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat, and wanted to raise tens of millions of dollars to fund a grand expedition and research project.
When I examined their claims, I was appalled and angry. They just filmed a cave somewhere on the mountain, throw stones into it, and said it had a “hollow sound of echo”, they found big rocks with holes drilled on top (which they claim they were anchors, actually they were shrines made by Christians) etc and they declared “we have the ark”. In news conferences, they repeated said they found it, but showed no physical evidences. They produced a movie and asked churches in the whole territory to buy up big lots of tickets.
I and other Christians posted on a Christian newspaper our views, stating that “ME” was misrepresenting facts about their discovery of the Noah’s Ark, and had heated debates with again the Fundamentalist.
I also found out “ME” site about the “Ark discovery” was full of false materials (including those from the notorious Ron Wyatt who claimed he found the remains of Pharaoh’s chariots that were under the Red See). I sent out an open letter listing all the misinformation in their site, eventually forced “ME” to remove them (but they did it quietly without making an apology on posting wrong things).
Re-visiting origins
The substantial amount of research I did draw my attention to an ancient problem – the earth was over 4 billion years old, there were no evidences of the Flood, that the Ark of that size cannot be seaworthy etc. – the origins of life, the Earth and the Universe crept to my mind. I started to question if Genesis was wrong, how about Virgin Birth and Resurrection ?
As I continued my research I found that much of the claims by Christians, whether about science and history, contained a lot of flaws. Furthermore, the Bible is by no way the inerrant word of God.
Nobody could explain the inconsistencies and cruelty in the Bible. Moreover, the Bible’s authorship was not as simple as most Christians learned about in Sunday Schools. Those were teachings from over 150 years ago. The new discovery and textual analysis, showed that, for example, the book of Genesis, was a compilation of sources up to the time the Israelites were abducted to Babylon, a long after the supposedly time of death of Moses (said to be the author of the first five books). The other books like Joshua, Ruth etc were all written in a manner to teach Israelites not to turn away from God, but many of the events were probably fictional. They were written again at later years.
The battles and wars by the Hebrews in Canaan resulted in large casualties, but no remains of the war were ever found, and the numbers were too high if we considered the world population at that time. Mostly they were exaggerations to make God looked powerful.
The account of Creation by Genesis was also scientifically wrong (plants appeared before the sun was created for example), and that the flood could not have covered the earth (that much water will be triple the volume of the waters of the ocean today) and a boat of that size (450 feet long) could not even stay afloat.
This clear errors in the Bible make me ponder the question, between science and Christianity, I must decide.
At that time I also kept myself updated on the development about arguments of Intelligent Designs and Evolution, I started to realize that, if there is proof that the origins of life, the Earth and the Universe are not a result of a higher being’s intervention (you may call it the Flying Spaghetti Monster), but purely the result of natural forces, then the foundation of Christianity will be gone. You don’t even have to talk about Virgin Birth, Resurrection and End Times.
I examined the evidence in the Bible, and there are clear inconsistencies on the accounts of Jesus’ birth and resurrection. I do not want to go in to details as this was well covered by many other ex-Christians. In a nut shell, the accounts were later created to elevate Jesus to Godhood, but it failed terribly when historical facts were checked. Jesus’ year of birth according to Matthew’s account and Luke’s account was 10 years apart. The census mentioned by Matthew never happened. The mention of the governor at Luke’s account was also in error.
Secondly, the genealogy of Jesus was clearly something created by the authors, they both referred to the paternal side (Joseph’s side of the family). Even if you take into accounts that gaps where there when generations were skipped, there were instances of clear inconsistencies.
The inconsistencies between the accounts of resurrection of Jesus was also disturbing.
I had those doubts buried until I bring myself to face it, and there could be no way anyone can harmonize it. Refer to infidels.org article here for an elaborate discussion: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/testimonials/bradley.html.
Up to this point, my long held belief that Jesus is God were all disproved, I did not ignore the facts presented to me.
As for Evolution, I already found out that those Christian claims that “Evolution” was challenged were all again blatant lies, they twisted news about new discoveries of bones that changes view of Evolution, and claimed that those discoveries “overturned” Evolution.
I visited infidels.org and another site dedicated to Evolution, and then a very good book that outlined how Evolution works and answered a lot of challenges to Evolution, how simple organisms emerged and evolved without conscious “design” and eventually to advanced organisms by natural selection.
I also read a fine book written by Mr. Fang Shi-Min, a PhD in heredity and biology, who did a brilliant job in explaining some intricate mechanism of Evolution (e.g. how a complex organ like the eye evolved). I was fully convinced evolution is a fact and needed no divine intervention to occur.
The point of no return
It was 2007, I still attended Christian activities, and I signed up for the Franklin Graham Festival as a choir member. By November, as the event drew near, I read another articles. This was the very last question that I needed answer. Does our universe (the energy, the matters therein) needed a creator ? Did somebody create our universe out from nothing ?
Here I found a logical flaw. Its hidden assumption was “for something to exist, it must be create”. This was simply begging the question. What we should ask was “how did our universe begin” without jumping to assumptions that it has to be “created”.
In reading articles on modern physics (which showed that matter could come to existence from non-matter) and that the universe is not a true vacuum, and about virtual particles, it can be demonstrated that matter can arise from non-matter. Secondly, the universe can exist on itself without being created. If something was there along, it needn’t be created. By then I cannot lie to myself, I am not a Christian anymore by definition, I am an atheist.
After some hesitation, I announced by switch to atheism. I could not bring myself to sing in the Franklin Graham Festival Choir (even I attended all the practices, knew the anthems back to back), because that was against my intellectual integrity and conscience. Once I realized that, I knew my mind has passed beyond the point of no return.
Settling in
As I settled after I made my announcement, I really am amazed how we can trick ourselves using our mind. We see what we wanted to see, for example goodness or kindness, we cannot find in our lives, we turned to religion because we hoped that we can find it in some deity. We need assurance that things are in control, probably because we felt at times we lose control of things. We are also uncomfortable that forces of nature are impartial and has no emotion when it happens in ways that stirs our mind. We projected our human nature to the “nature” (mother nature, storms have names etc.). Sure, we shared a lot of commonalities with animals, but that does not give laws of nature a “personality”. The mechanistic view of nature is not pleasing or appealing, but should we go as far as to create our god so that nature is more appealing?
One aspect of Fundamentalism and Evangelism is to attribute God’s hand in everything. The Tsunami in late 2004 was branded as God punishing South Asia and India, which are predominantly pagans in their eyes. However they overlooked cases where pagan temples stood intact after the earthquake and Tsunami, and Christian lives lost in that event (I knew an entire family, the parents and children were lost). They failed to see the human kindness displayed by people during the hard times.
Another is that, Fundamentalist used evangelization to justify everything. For instance, to evangelize Catholics, they created bunches of lies to lure them to convert. To evangelize university undergraduates that has some background in science, they created lies about Evolution. They would even justify persecution of fringe religious group (e,g. China’s Falungong) so to “make way for Gospel”. They even hailed the torture of prisoners held at Guatemala, that the Muslims no matter what, the present of US Troops in Iraq open doors for Evangelization.
Evangelicals are no better. The book by Barna Group (unChristian: what What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters) described precisely their distorted world view because of Christian teachings.
The many pseudoscience stuffs (equivalent to quacks) propagated by Christians are just a direct product of their view that God is there to push things. When there is a gap in the argument, they fill the blanks with the word “God did it”. Their behaviors are just like politicians or lobbyists of big corporations creating opinion to support their agenda, rather than the pursuit of truth.
Concluding words
My story will definitely hurt a lot of my friends I had since I became Christian. Many of these friends are kind and compassionate, but will definitely not able to share my views because their world view is so different from mine. I will like to maintain relationship with them. Fortunately I made new friends who are Liberals, agnostics, and atheists. Something I am happy about.
Prologue – A confrontation
This dialogue was a confrontation between me and my pastor some months before I left Christianity, which just shows how narrow-minded, irrational and authoritarian ministers can be when their core beliefs are confronted. I hope in time, my Christian friends will see the facts.
This confrontation with my church's senior pastor was over the question of "once-saved-always-saved".
During the conversation, he just printed out 10 pages and said there were "over 100 verses in the Bible" that proved "once-saved-always-saved".
He was not ready to discuss with me, he wanted me to submit. I challenged him a number of points citing the a Christian publication reporting a newly emerged church being a "heretic":
Me: the article listed a number of criteria that makes this church heretic. One is the divinity of Christ, one is pastoral authority, and the other one is "rejecting once-saved-always-saved". I reject once-saved-always-saved, you said the other Sunday with emphasis on this point when talking about this church. Answer me, am I now a heretic?
Pastor: ..... You took the words out of context, it should be placed alongside with the others.
Me: This is illogical, if you listed it there, then as long as you fulfill the one or more of it, then it meet the criteria.
Pastor: ....no ..no, you have to consider it with others
Me: then this criteria "rejecting once-saved-always-saved" should not be there. It is one that the Christendom never agreed on, and I do not believe any pastor should preach it as the dogma similar to Trinitarian formula.
Pastor:.....I am a Baptist minister for 40 years, I was to preach the truth in the Bible, once-saved-always-saved is the truth as proven by the Bible.
Me: then what about the Methodists, the Lutherans, surely you know they don't teach once-saved-always-saved ? The Methodists is against this doctrine.
Pastor: I refuse to comment other churches. I tell you, I am a veteran minister who preached for 40 years. We preach the truth as said in the Bible. The Bible is literally true; the world is created in 6 days, each day a 24 hour day. Do you know that in USA the South Western Theological Seminary, once professor published a set of commentaries and used the word "myth" to describe Genesis? He was sacked and the whole set of commentaries were rewritten. I preach what I believed is true and I do not have to answer to any individual. You are free to read anything you like, but in my church, it is what it will be taught..
.....
We have no common ground. All I saw was a person that refuses to have a conversation, but only wants to thrust his set of beliefs down my throat.
http://www.armbell.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4895&mforum=liberalhk |
2008/3/1 12:12
| 