I have seen many Christian comments, sent as a response to some of my posts in this blog (which also appears in Multiply and Facebook). Most of these “comments” are but justifications of their faith…well truthfind123’s comment is not an exception, but come on, the guy wrote something like an article. It deserves my truthful response.
Some visitors to this site have posted their articles on why they left Christianity. In response to them here I post an article on “why I do NOT leave Christianity”. If you as a Christian or as a former Christian feel or felt abandoned, disappointed, angry, burdened, weary, guilty and afraid, you are or were missing the most important point of Christianity. You were born for much better than who you are now. You were born for a butterfly instead of a caterpillar which you may live now.
It was really peculiar that he (truthfind123) posted an entire article below my blog post. Obviously he has other intention other than to...eh..."response". I don’t mind long post, most people don’t read long blog post anyway.
Hmmmm…what is this “most important point” truthfind123 was talking about. If such a point does exist in Christianity, common sense dictates I never left Christianity in the first place. However, people who left Christianity already saw the empty void…that is the point truthfind123 refuses to see.
You are missing the full potential as a true free human being created and loved by God. “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28)”, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:32)”.
As I have read most your articles from the beginning to the end with patience, I hope you would also have enough patience to read mine to the end to be a fair deal. Although I have not taken any formal courses on theology, my personal experiences with God would be helpful for you to understand some key aspects of true Christianity.
As you will see soon after reading my article, true Christianity is not about keeping man-made rules, rituals and traditions out of duty or out of fear of punishment. Christianity is also not about seeking peace, comfort and happiness through wishful thinking. Christianity is all about a loving relationship with the Creator of the universe and our very souls, experiencing explosive joy, thanks and freedom here and for eternity.
I became a Christian in my late twenties during my graduate study in theoretical physics. Before then I was an atheist and believed in myself.
Freedom and Christianity does not go to bed together @ truthfind123 and sorry…no amount of Bible razzle-dazzle can squeeze Miss Freedom with Jesus H. Christ. You see, religion requires unconditional loyalty or face the consequences to its fans.
Theoretical phycisist huh? Ok…
Anyway, let us go back to the subject.
What kind of loving relationship is truthfind123 talking about? Reading the Bible, we find a very different relationship…a relationship base on divine commands. We (humans) are obligated to follow God’s command. There is always something like a loyalty check going on. “Hey! Maybe you can kill your kid instead of giving me that same ol’ damn sheep for a change!”, thus spoke God to Abraham…
Try reading your Bible @ truthfind123 and look how Mr. God orders people to kill one another. So? Is this what you call “loving relationship?”
[Note: Notice the “being an atheist” in truthfind123’s comment? Christian always use the so-called “once an atheist” to give an emphasis on making the right change and becoming a Christian. The “theoretical physics” on the other hand is a Christian ploy to make them look “bright” – this is to give an impression that he is as smart or smarter than the non-believer.]
It is impossible to have a loving relationship with your God @ truthfind123. Why? Because we can only make a relationship with existing entities. The truth is relationships are forged between you and your church. You get that feeling of explosive joy, thanks and freedom if that church you belong also believes on those things you believed. Look, try questioning your church doctrines and tell me what happened?
To set a stage for the whole story, let me start my story by discussing a fundamental difference between human beings and animals. I think the difference between them is more than just higher intelligence. Human beings ask self-awareness questions such as “Who am I? Where am I from and where am I going? What is the meaning of my life?” I do not think animals ask these kinds of questions to themselves. If you think that they do and that we just do not know it, that is your belief.
If you think human beings and animals are about the same except higher intelligence, it is your belief. But my belief is that there is a fundamental difference between them. As science and technology advance further, future supercomputers could solve problems much faster and efficiently than the smartest person in the world and their IQ (Intelligent Quotient) could reach 1000 or 10000. No matter how intelligent those supercomputers could be, still they will not be able to ask themselves “Who am I (computer)? Where am I (computer) from and where am I (computer) going? What is the meaning of my (computer’s) life?”
Hay…here we go again.
Since you are a Christian @ truthfind123 it is your pre-conceived idea (as influenced by the Genesis narrative) that man is higher than animals…That is really not true.
Self-awareness is a survival tool. It came from our survival instinct. Intelligence came from our curiosity – a special thanks to our primate cousins. Other animals do not need that much to survive. You see @ truthfind123, if we humans were stripped down to our bare essentials, we will not survive. Without our tools, inventions, apparatus…we will cease to exist.
Try running in the wilderness with nothing but your birthday suit and tell me how far you can go. Other animals on the other hand have their own special qualities…they can fly or swim without the use of any artificial equipments. Some are more agile and others have special sensors built in their bodies. Some are even resistant to certain diseases. My! The only special humans have is the mush between their ears.
Oh and let us not waste our time with false analogy. Supercomputers are not natural life forms.
Self-awareness and intelligence are quite different matters. What makes this self-awareness that human beings have but animals do not? I believe that human beings have a soul while animals do not. Where did it come from? I believe that it is from God, because apparently it is not from materialistic things. Since a soul is a spirit, there is no way to prove or disprove its existence by a scientific way for which everybody agrees.
You may argue that a soul appears by random chance or does not even exist in the first place. Just like I cannot prove its existence beyond several pieces of circumstantial evidence by a scientific way, you cannot also disprove its existence by the same way. If you think it does not exist, it is not a fact but your belief. But my belief is that there is a fundamental difference between human beings and animals because the former have a soul but the latter do not, and that the soul is from God.
I think you are telling me that souls are synonymous with spirits and self-awareness is the by-product of the soul. Is that it?Because a soul, God and heaven are all spiritual matters, it appears impossible to know and experience the spiritual world by the same way as we do for materialistic things such as science.
That idea is pre-Christian @ truthfind123…Oh I forgot… anthropology and ancient history are not part of your curriculum when you studied your theoretical physics. Anyway, early Greek philosophers like Empedocles, Aristotle, Plato and Alcmaeon believed that a spirit reside in our body (they say it is inside our heart). That is the same idea the New Testament writers believed. Speaking of spirit and soul, early Hebrews believe that the soul is something that distinguished a living being to something non-living, but they believe that it will perish…no ever-lasting life. This is similar to the Akkadian idea. Soul and blood are drain away at death. The idea of an immortal soul came not from God but from Zoroastrianism. Now, because of the combination of early religious philosophies from that region mixed together with some Hellenistic philosophy and Roman myths…TADA! We now have the Christian immortality of the soul.
Not all religions have this doctrine. In Native American belief for example, all things living things and non-living things, have a spirit. In Jainism, animals have spirits.
[Note: A soul is a living being. In the Genesis narrative, God formed man from inert matter (clay) and blew to his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. That is quite different from the concept of spirit. It is hard to define what is a spirit (some suggest that there are 95 ways to define it). Most Christians define spirit as an immaterial, invisible, sentient entity such as God, angels and demons. It is also believed that all human beings have spirits that leaves the body after death. The word spirit (Latin: spiritus) literally means “breath”.]
In science we do the appropriate experiments to prove or disprove a proposed theory or hypothesis. But because the spiritual matters do not exist in the materialistic world, they can be known and experienced in ways other than scientific ones. As just one of many examples in our everyday life, think about the unconditional love of a mother for her child. How would you know or measure her unconditional love for her child before observing or experiencing it yourself? By studying the structure of her heart or of her neurons in the brain? I do not think you can do it this way. Although we cannot observe or measure it by scientific ways, we are sure there exists that kind of special love in a mother. Science has done a lots of things for human beings, but there are still some areas we cannot understand and approach by scientific ways because they do not exist in the materialistic world. Due to its nature, the presence of the spiritual world can be known by its effects. “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the spirit (John 3:8)”.
Yes, I believe that there are issues that cannot be verify by science.
Science will never solve…
…how kryptonite affects Superman.
…how Wonder Woman’s invisible plane works.
…why the Hulk’s skin is green.
…how Jack Napier survived the acid bath to become the Joker.
…how Voltes V can carry all those weapons in his arm.
…how Getta Robot and Getta Robot G can transform to 3 different robots.
…and how Popeye become inhumanly strong just by eating a can of spinach.
But seriously…
Karl Popper restricted falsification to empirical statements and restricted science on philosophical or metaphysical theories, which are irrefutable by definition.
That’s positivism for you @ truthfind123
Any proposition that cannot ultimately be reduced to a simple statement of fact, special or general, can have no real or intelligible sense.
So are you trying to hide your spiritual wonderland in a positivist curtain?
Fortunately for me, spiritual matters or supernatural claims can be studied…and can also be refuted. Since your claims that these spirits exist, we can study the data that you will present as evidence. Remember, every hypothesis (even supernatural ones) must be tested. If it is untestible, then they are factually incorrect.
Remember @ truthfind123, science does not consider any hypothesis as unfalsifiable. For example, we can test your claims on the existence of your spiritual world. We can check your assumptions, your hypothesis. What we need to do is to experiment…controlled experiments are essential. Rhetoric and argumentation cannot generate your claim.
Base on the hypothesis you presented, we can prove or disprove your claim. If all your hypothesis (on the existence of a spiritual world) failed and has not withstood the test of the data, then that means the truth of your belief (compare to my belief on its non-existence) has a very small percentage of being true.
[Note: We can disprove a claim. For example, if I will say all the marbles in a box are blue, I automatically disprove that there are red marbles inside the box.
Other than direct observation, we can also use logic to prove a negative.]
Going back to your post @ truthfind123
Unlike your…er…primeval ideas, science have discovered the biological cause of motherly love. Our maternal love can be traced back to our mammalian ancestors. It is not uniquely human. Meteorologists can also tell where the wind comes from and where it is going. That’s why we have weather stations that can give us an hourly update on the weather channel. They do not have that in Jesus’ time.
Haven’t they taught you that on theoretical physics?
Then can we know how the spiritual world works? Many people try to understand and approach it by speculation. They theorize, conjecture and guess it. They think that God should be the way they want it or do things the way they want it. On one hand, some group of people create their own Genie whom they worship and fear according to their man-made rules, rituals and traditions. On the other hand, other group of people are disappointed with their Genie because their Genie does not answer their prayers the way they want it.
But there is an alternative to speculation about the knowledge of the spiritual world. Revelation through the Bible.
I believe the Bible is God’s words written by the hands of people who were inspired by God. Because it was written and transcribed by human hands over many years, there could be some mistakes in words and phrases. But the core message, who God really is and what he has done such as the salvation of human beings from sin through faith in the Messiah, remains the same. If you think the every word of the Bible is a fabrication by human beings for controlling other human beings, this is again your belief.
According to you @ truthfind 123, the statement above is your "belief" (I even emphasized it by making it appear in bold letters) so base on your own...method, why would I believe you? Remember, this is again your belief.
Do you know how the spiritual world works?
It seems you are also speculating about it @ truthfind123. Do you have any empirical idea or experience on a world govern by disembodied beings while living in a material universe?
Therefore, your belief is as good as my belief until you can prove the validity of your truth-claim. In order to be true, a belief must hold a degree of strong evidence amidst all inquiries and must pass all critical scrutiny.
[Note: Belief is the sum total of everything that you accepted as true. It define your world-view, your behavior, your emotions and on how you response to other human being.]
Now how can a book inspired by an omnipotent/omniscient God would have mistakes in words and phrases? And does it follow that if it has errors chances are the "coew massage" can also be contaminated with errors?
The problem with this is that the so-called "inspired by God" is really a relative interpretation of man. Every word in the Bible are interpreted differently by different Christian denominations who believed that they know the true "word of God".
Let see...an Evangelical Christian interpret the Bible literally while a liberal Christian may accept some of its passages as metaphor. Roman Catholic interprets it differently compare to Protestants and so on. Hmmmmmm...the Iglesia ni Cristo (Church of Christ) believe that faith alone is not the key to salvation @ truthfind 123. They believe that you must join the "true church" in order to be save. Roman Catholics believe that salvation is achieve by works and faith. Oh and did I forget to tell you that the also use the same Bible that you use to justify thier claim.
So...how can I be so cock sure that your interpretation of the Bible is the correct one @ truthfind 123?
Therefore it's your belief against them. Who's telling the truth?
I advise you to visit http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/authenticity.html for more objective information about the Bible.
I have already visited this site @ truthfind 123. Uh...I'm am not convinced by their articles. Too lame.
Since the true characters of a being are revealed only through interactions with other beings, in the old testament God chose a particular group of people (Israel) as an object lesson to show the whole world who he really is. Through the relationship of God with the people of Israel, we come to know and understand the true characters of God, which could be quite different from your Genie whom you might have created by speculation.
Interaction can be achieve only by existing entities @ truthfind 123. Since you are talking of a literature, we only understand the character of such literature on the way you interpret the fiction.
Now, take your God as an example.
In the Old Testament, we see that this God seem to be quite stupid, especially if you read the narrative from Genesis to Exodus. Compare to other supreme beings in other sacred texts, this "God" is too short-sighted. For a being who has omnipotent and omniscient powers, he can't even prevent a snake to enter his garden.
He can't even make a full-proof plan. He flooded the Earth to get rid of sin. Thousand years later, well look whose back in planet Earth, that he has to sacrifice himself in order to save man from himself. I thought he flooded the Earth to take away sin? Boy talk about omniscience.
In addition, why would God choose a nobody? What does Israel did as a civilization? What was their accomplishment? Other ancient civilization like the Mayans, the Toltecs, the Hindus and the Chinese are quite oblivious in the existence of Israel. Maybe it’s not God who chooses Israel. It’s maybe because the Romans invaded Israel and made it into her province…Hmmmm..the Romans does have a reputation of creating gods.
Woah! I think Aladdin's Genie can make a better plan.
[Note: Genies do not answer prayers, they grant wishes. Ginies (jinns) are haunting-demons of the desert and wilderness or as described by the Qur’an – fire-spirits living on Earth though invisible. They are part of pre-Islamic Arabia mythology that was later incorporated to the Qur’an. ]
God is the creator of the universe including our souls, unconditionally loves human beings created in his image, at the same time he is also just and righteous. But the loving relationship between the creator and creatures was broken by our sin of disobeying God and following the evil suggestions of Satan. As a result sin entered into the hearts of human beings and we were separated from the love of God, because God and sin are completely incompatible. But God still desired to have a relationship with human beings so he devised an animal sacrifice where the blood of animals (without defect) was shed to pay the penalty of our sins in our behalf. Since God is just and righteous, the consequence of sins must be paid for complete forgiveness.
Do you have any slightest idea what unconditional means @ truthfind123?
un•con•di•tion•al ( n k n-d sh -n l)
adj.
Without conditions or limitations; absolute:
NO CONDITION…NADA…ZIP…NO STRING ATTACHED!
Whether there is a sin or not an unconditional love does not ask for anything else…No hell, no damnation, and no punishment.
Now let see…if I don’t believe in Jesus, I will go to hell. If I don’t obey his laws I’m kaputz! That sounded too damn conditional to where I stand.
Remember, a god always rely on the unconditional subjugation of his believers. Without prayers and worship, God will wither and die. Admit it @ truthfind123; God is your personal genie - a genie where you wish for an afterlife in heaven when you kick the bucket. It is also your genie where you wish for food, money and fame. (you call those things as blessings, right?)
Think…will you still believe that god if there were no promises of a blissful afterlife? Reality dictates – its just plain pragmatism. Christians does not really love God. Nope! They love themselves and just uses God so they can get the afterlife jackpot, by praising his abominable name.
Let see...If God is all-powerful, why does Satan exist? Surely is your god does love us, he have already disintegrate Satan before humans ever walk on Earth? So what happened to this so-called "unconditional love"? Don't you think destroying Satan is less gory and bloody compare to being hang in a tree or nailed to a cross?
If this God can't even kick a bad guy's butt, why would I believe you that he created the Universe in the first place.
Uhhhhh...and I smell a contradiction here @ truth 123. You said that God's love is unconditional? Now unconditional means without conditions or limitations. So why does he need animal sacrifices, blood-letting as payment?
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