View Single Post
#7
11-30-2014, 11:24 PM
Senior Member
From Nevada
Joined in Sep 2010
794 posts
Quote:
Originally Posted by drvenom View Post
Abaddon, congrats on your spiritual awakening man. I share your enthusiasm for God’s love and message. There are a few words that I have to say in hopes of preventing the thread from going down a bad road before I share some of my thoughts on the matter.

For those of you that are of a different faith, including atheists:

Yes, we know that Christians have done some horrific things in the name of Christianity in the past. I am in complete agreement that such atrocities are disgusting and that Christians, specifically, need to find ways to never conduct themselves in such ways. However, the same is true of people who have held other worldviews (atheists, Muslims, ect). The fact of the matter is that people can be shit heads no matter what worldview they hold.

Having said this, I hope that people will be respectful in these discussions that are quite important to many of us. That is not to say that you need to agree with us, but that you should ask questions and voice your doubts with the same respect that you would do so in a university class, for example. This way, we can actually have a conversation.


Ok now on to the topic:

Again Abaddon, congrats. I’m a pretty liberal Christian; I’m a Catholic-Episcopalian. For example, I’m down with gay rights (we can discuss this in private if you want), I don’t go preaching “you’re going to hell,” and I love interfaith talks (with Atheists, Muslims, ect). I try to approach my faith with the same rigor that I use in philosophy and mathematics. As a matter of fact, I question my beliefs on a daily basis; I think every person should. It does not even matter what worldview one holds, unchecked beliefs can be dangerous. And to be honest, I think those Christians that go around telling people that they are going to hell are just as bad as those atheist that call people of faith idiots.

I thought I should share with you guys how I truly became to believe in Christianity. I was born into Christianity, but I didn’t always believe in it. Who would, it sounds like a faery tail until you analyze it. I was going through my Atheist stage of life and one day it occurred to me, “Why I’m I Atheist?” Actually, more than an Atheist, I had become a naturalist (i.e. we are just cells and then we die). So I wrote down a whole bunch of questions to try to answer them honestly and with philosophical rigor. Most of my questions started with the phrase “what evidence or logical argument do I have for…” That little exercise led me to realize that I was no better than those Christians out on the street telling people that they are going to hell. I was so embarrassed of myself.

At that point, the best thing that I could do was to do some research. I started with one of the most basic yet difficult questions, “What evidence or logical argument do we have for and against the existence of a God(s)?” Notice that at this point I was not even talking about any specific God (Christianity, ect). I just wanted to know if it was more likely that some self-aware entity was responsible for the universe. I didn’t even bring into the equation if this entity could be nice or a total ass. That comes later. As you can imagine, I looked into the Kalam cosmological argument and so on.

Once I was convinced that the universe could not have come out of nothing and that there must have been, to the best of my knowledge, some sort of entity responsible for such universe, I had to ask myself about the properties (characteristics) of that entity. It is at this stage where I asked myself, can it be possible that this entity be the same thing that Christians, Jews, Muslims, or other monotheistic religions talk about? And after a lot of damn reading it turned out, for me at least, that Christianity is a pretty close call. I can go into some specifics if anyone wants me to, but suffice it to say that it is quite logically convincing for me. This is not to say that I don’t question Christianity… I think I get into more arguments with Christians than I do with even Atheists lol. As a matter of fact, I read the bible quite a bit and I’m always questioning things in there that seem illogical or straight out cruel. However, in reading so, I keep in mind that much of the bible's content was meant for people of a specific time and place. Hence, I have to make sure to be careful in reading the bible within its context. Only then, do I analyze passages in that lovely book.

Anyways, that is how I came to be Christian.

My apologies for any grammatical errors. I had to write this response in a flash.
If anything I consider myself to be more of an Agnostic, but it really bothers me how militant some Atheists can get online; you know the people who practically worship Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins (I think they are both Assholes). I mean, really, what good does it do to be bitching your beliefs online like it really is going to change someones mind..
Post your reply or quote more messages.