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Goodbye Jesus

Faith And Doubt


TheRedneckProfessor

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Posted this in response to TheHappyWarrior's extimony.  Thought I'd make a thread of it.

 

Faith and Doubt

 

It would seem that faith and doubt are necessary bed-fellows; they go hand-in-hand.  One cannot have faith without also having doubts.  The attempt to believe something incredibly extra-ordinary without so much as a scrap of evidence, or even the means to obtain any evidence, will always leave the believer with nagging doubts. 

 

Those who seem the most convinced are often secretly the most doubtful; just as those who give the most hugs are often the ones most in need of them.

 

Those who can overcome their doubts, those who can ignore their questions--they remain believers.  Those who cannot, deconvert.

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It seems like people often try very hard to be extra faithful Christians when they are secretly struggling with doubts. They are afraid to give-up on Christianity, so they make one last super-human effort to make it work. People who have less doubts can slow down to a steady pace.

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I mostly ignored my doubts when I was a christian.  I was one of those sold-out, radical, on-fire for jesus types.  That's what I was expected to be; so that's what I became.  It wasn't until about two years before my deconversion that I finally stopped ignoring my doubts.  They had always been with me; but when I finally started to look my doubts in the eye, all hell broke lose.

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I ignored my doubts. I had them, it started in high school; and I started rejecting the Bible in high school. But I continued to believe in a mystical, non dogmatic God for the next 30 years. I didn't question those remaining beliefs until I came to exC.

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I agree that those with the most doubt put on the biggest act on behalf of Xtianity. Xtianity teaches the flock to preach the gospel. So by doing so Xtans think they will increase their faith. But it doesn't work. There was guy in the last Sunday School class I attended who was a real true believer. When it was his turn to teach the class, he sounded angry the whole hour. Not that anyone was disagreeing with him. Anger was his way of maintaining the courage he needed to stand up and teach in front of the class. It was a way to fend off anyone who might challenge his mindless assurances. And it helped him to keep a top on his own doubts. This mind set is not at all uncommon. bill

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Me as christian back then always have some doubts

especially because I was raised in liberal church

while most churches said that doubt is prohibited and u must have only faith

I found that doubt is a complement to faith and change

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I guess it's kind of like yin and yang; you can't have one without the other.  That's where cognitive dissonance comes into play.

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Something I've been wondering - is Christian faith really about the bible? There are so many stories and inconsistencies that don't fit into the wonderful vision of God that they have, and I get the feeling that the Bible is more like a supplement. An inspiration too, sure, but it was compiled after Christianity was founded and a lot of books didn't make the cut.

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I think you're spot on, RNP. I think there's a cycle there, especially in our current society with the access to information. People can't just stay isolated in their little communities.. eventually you are exposed to different information. Some people run the other way and hunker down in their camps (more faith), some start to listen and explore (doubts). It's a spectrum that you have to maintain some position on if you are to be a believer.

 

I think what has been most refreshing to me in this process is realizing that, as an atheist, I don't have to put myself on the pendulum anywhere. I don't have to defend something unless I TRULY believe it. With Christianity, I was always finding myself with puzzling questions and cognitive dissonance that didn't make sense. Now I can take my beliefs/ideas one by one and decide what I believe, instead of getting stuck with a whole package of beliefs that may or may not fit for me.

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I have had that exact thought! It's the underlying doubt that feeds faith. A believer must continually convince himself that his beliefs are correct in order to persist in them. This continual convincing (church going, bible reading, etc.) is necessary to fight against the unbelief they are trying to hide from themselves.

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Faith and Doubt

 

It would seem that faith and doubt are necessary bed-fellows; they go hand-in-hand.  One cannot have faith without also having doubts.  The attempt to believe something incredibly extra-ordinary without so much as a scrap of evidence, or even the means to obtain any evidence, will always leave the believer with nagging doubts.

 

While it is clearly true that they often go together, it is actually false to say that it is "necessary" that they go together. I, for one, had faith for many years without a shred of doubt. I firmly believed that there was evidence and that it was absolute truth, and I didn't start doubting until I was 29. (I'm not proud of the fact that I was fully duped until that age, but it is a fact nonetheless.) I guarantee you that there are plenty others out there in the faith who don't have doubts.

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I have had that exact thought! It's the underlying doubt that feeds faith. A believer must continually convince himself that his beliefs are correct in order to persist in them. This continual convincing (church going, bible reading, etc.) is necessary to fight against the unbelief they are trying to hide from themselves.

 

Yes, without church, bible study, and constant exposure to those that look like they are experiencing it as a reality, the motives to leave grow large. We all know the doubts we had, and that others would regularly confess similar issues and most often tearfully repent in an emotional service, quickly surrounded by people laying their hands on them and praying. The reality of the doubts get buried in emotional experience and group acceptance which is often more satisfying to us than truth. Believers that defend the faith automatically switch off their own experiences with failed prayer, a silent god, promises that fall flat repeatedly, and sour church experiences, and instead trumpet the gospel as a rich and rewarding experience, full of a thriving personal relationship of their savior. Since we've been through all of that, we have a unique insight to the real world of believers and can relate to them from that vantage point.

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Faith and Doubt

 

It would seem that faith and doubt are necessary bed-fellows; they go hand-in-hand.  One cannot have faith without also having doubts.  The attempt to believe something incredibly extra-ordinary without so much as a scrap of evidence, or even the means to obtain any evidence, will always leave the believer with nagging doubts.

 

While it is clearly true that they often go together, it is actually false to say that it is "necessary" that they go together. I, for one, had faith for many years without a shred of doubt. I firmly believed that there was evidence and that it was absolute truth, and I didn't start doubting until I was 29. (I'm not proud of the fact that I was fully duped until that age, but it is a fact nonetheless.) I guarantee you that there are plenty others out there in the faith who don't have doubts.

 

We both speak from our own experience.  If someone had asked me back then if I had any doubts I would have told them absolutely not.  I would have meant it completely at the time.  It wasn't until after I started deconverting that I realized how much doubt I actually had and how adept I had become at ignoring it.

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Faith and Doubt

 

It would seem that faith and doubt are necessary bed-fellows; they go hand-in-hand.  One cannot have faith without also having doubts.  The attempt to believe something incredibly extra-ordinary without so much as a scrap of evidence, or even the means to obtain any evidence, will always leave the believer with nagging doubts.

 

While it is clearly true that they often go together, it is actually false to say that it is "necessary" that they go together. I, for one, had faith for many years without a shred of doubt. I firmly believed that there was evidence and that it was absolute truth, and I didn't start doubting until I was 29. (I'm not proud of the fact that I was fully duped until that age, but it is a fact nonetheless.) I guarantee you that there are plenty others out there in the faith who don't have doubts.

 

We both speak from our own experience.  If someone had asked me back then if I had any doubts I would have told them absolutely not.  I would have meant it completely at the time.  It wasn't until after I started deconverting that I realized how much doubt I actually had and how adept I had become at ignoring it.

 

 

I wasn't challenging your experience. Note that I did say that "it is clearly true that they often go together." I was only saying that it's false to broadbrush it as every Christian's experience. It wasn't my experience at all for nearly the whole time I was a Christian, and I guarantee that there are other Christians who don't doubt Christianity. My doubts didn't start until I was 29; some probably have doubts the whole time; some probably have doubts off and on; and some probably never reach a point of doubting. Everyone is different.

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Faith and Doubt

 

It would seem that faith and doubt are necessary bed-fellows; they go hand-in-hand. One cannot have faith without also having doubts. The attempt to believe something incredibly extra-ordinary without so much as a scrap of evidence, or even the means to obtain any evidence, will always leave the believer with nagging doubts.

While it is clearly true that they often go together, it is actually false to say that it is "necessary" that they go together. I, for one, had faith for many years without a shred of doubt. I firmly believed that there was evidence and that it was absolute truth, and I didn't start doubting until I was 29. (I'm not proud of the fact that I was fully duped until that age, but it is a fact nonetheless.) I guarantee you that there are plenty others out there in the faith who don't have doubts.

We both speak from our own experience. If someone had asked me back then if I had any doubts I would have told them absolutely not. I would have meant it completely at the time. It wasn't until after I started deconverting that I realized how much doubt I actually had and how adept I had become at ignoring it.

I wasn't challenging your experience. Note that I did say that "it is clearly true that they often go together." I was only saying that it's false to broadbrush it as every Christian's experience. It wasn't my experience at all for nearly the whole time I was a Christian, and I guarantee that there are other Christians who don't doubt Christianity. My doubts didn't start until I was 29; some probably have doubts the whole time; some probably have doubts off and on; and some probably never reach a point of doubting. Everyone is different.

A sliding scale perhaps. Few things are black and white. I think most Christians have doubts about varying things. Exactly what they doubt and to what extent they doubt I'm sure is a matter of degree. Then there certainly are those who are so indoctrinated (from infancy) that they never question. It's accepted as fact from authority.

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A sliding scale perhaps. Few things are black and white. I think most Christians have doubts about varying things. Exactly what they doubt and to what extent they doubt I'm sure is a matter of degree. Then there certainly are those who are so indoctrinated (from infancy) that they never question. It's accepted as fact from authority.

 

 

Exactly. I was one of those heavily indoctrinated with the "truth" of Christianity, so much so that I didn't question it until many years later. If it hadn't been for serious internal inconsistencies in the Bible that I eventually realized were there, there's a strong probability that I might have remained a permanently undoubting believer. The brainwashing was thorough and deeply rooted.

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My personal outlook may be a little unusual

  1. Faith is the stern oppressor of reason.
  2. Doubt is the cry of rage of an imprisoned intelligence.
  3. Belief is the decision to choose a specific outlook without asserting that it is necessarily right and cannot be changed.

I have no issue with belief.  I have come to intensely dislike faith.  Doubt holds the hope for faith's overthrow.

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My personal outlook may be a little unusual

  • Faith is the stern oppressor of reason.
  • Doubt is the cry of rage of an imprisoned intelligence.
  • Belief is the decision to choose a specific outlook without asserting that it is necessarily right and cannot be changed.
I have no issue with belief. I have come to intensely dislike faith. Doubt holds the hope for faith's overthrow.

That's an interesting outlook Ellias. We all have beliefs. No one is 100% doubting skeptical about everything. You can't function in life that way. Assumptions must be made in order to make decisions. Now, whether or not those assumptions are actually true or how accurate they are is a different question. It's reasonable to form beliefs regarding ordinary claims with a little information. But the degree of our certainty should be proportionate to the amount of information we have. That said, when it comes to extraordinary claims which have little to no evidence, we are not justified in holding beliefs with any degree of certainty. Strong skepticism is the reasonable responce to such claims. You draw a distinction between belief and faith, which I think is appropriate. It's one thing to like the idea of god and "believe" in it because you like it; it's best if one is honest with himself about this being the real reason, not claiming to have actual knowledge or certainty. That would be "faith." In this case, I would call faith being certain that something is true based on no evidence. Belief (opinion) is not necessarily unreasonable, but faith is.

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That is more or less what I was trying to convey.

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I was only the fiery type for a couple years in my early 20s, and it was an effort to be convinced.

I definitely think the angry front has everything to do with maintaining their own faith. I don't know if faith is more important than the Bible or not. I always found reading the Bible to be easier to do than pray. I was one of those for years who read from it every day. Couldn't really do the devotional types of editorial literature that seems so popular. I just read from the source. Funny thing is, I think that's in great measure what kept me entertaining those doubts. People who read those other pulp books, well that's my opinion of that stuff, are told how to believe and think about what the text says. I've never really functioned that way, even if I did put up a pretense at doing so.

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I was only the fiery type for a couple years in my early 20s, and it was an effort to be convinced.

I definitely think the angry front has everything to do with maintaining their own faith. I don't know if faith is more important than the Bible or not. I always found reading the Bible to be easier to do than pray. I was one of those for years who read from it every day. Couldn't really do the devotional types of editorial literature that seems so popular. I just read from the source. Funny thing is, I think that's in great measure what kept me entertaining those doubts. People who read those other pulp books, well that's my opinion of that stuff, are told how to believe and think about what the text says. I've never really functioned that way, even if I did put up a pretense at doing so.

I had much the same experience, Leo. I never could get into devotional books as a christian. I found them too shallow and just one person's interpretation. I digested the bible though. I read the whole thing several times all together. My road to deconversion started when I finally addressed the contradictions rather than ignore then.
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I was only the fiery type for a couple years in my early 20s, and it was an effort to be convinced.

I definitely think the angry front has everything to do with maintaining their own faith. I don't know if faith is more important than the Bible or not. I always found reading the Bible to be easier to do than pray. I was one of those for years who read from it every day. Couldn't really do the devotional types of editorial literature that seems so popular. I just read from the source. Funny thing is, I think that's in great measure what kept me entertaining those doubts. People who read those other pulp books, well that's my opinion of that stuff, are told how to believe and think about what the text says. I've never really functioned that way, even if I did put up a pretense at doing so.

I had much the same experience, Leo. I never could get into devotional books as a christian. I found them too shallow and just one person's interpretation. I digested the bible though. I read the whole thing several times all together. My road to deconversion started when I finally addressed the contradictions rather than ignore then.

 

 

Same here with devotionals. I never saw the need for them. Since we had "God's Word," why focus on man's interpretations instead of letting the "Word of God" speak directly to you?

 

I also digested the Bible, even memorizing large portions of it (three whole books, some other chapters and a slew of other verses). The difference for me is that I didn't "ignore" contradictions as a believer. Many contradictions I hadn't noticed, while with others I often accepted apologists' rationalizations. I was firmly convinced that there weren't any real contradictions in the Bible, so there was *always* a reconciliation, even in the occasional cases where I couldn't come up with one. Usually, though, I could think of reconciliations or found some that were acceptable in my brainwashed perspective. (Ironically, it actually was some contradictions in the gospels that eventually did get me started questioning.)

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The other thing about the devotional books I didn't like was the kind of preachy atmosphere, the moralizing. I know, as a Xian I was supposed to like that stuff. But I always sought to find sources who could lay things out in the way I've grown used to as an engineer: don't tell me the result, lay out the evidence and your initial question, I'll do diligence based on what you said and return a result. That's not how that stuff works, and I'm befuddled as to what took me so long in discovering it.

Real Roman history does wonders against the gospels.

My first deconversion step was to put off the old testament as a work of a Bin Laden-style terrorist. I remember secretly with a couple doubters, we would say: "Yahweh knocked over one tower (Gen. 11), Bin Laden knocked over two. Who's dead?" Of course you can't have the new without the old, which is why there's such a strong defense of the bronze-age terrorists. But anyway, I always would go through this cycle with the apologist types: Take the argument they had, be relieved there was a pretty good-sounding argument, then my brain would go to work on it, and it would come up empty, what I know now as confirmation bias. Every single time. It was constant with those people.

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I never did devotional books either; though everyone in my old church was all into them.  I tried a few times, but generally found them to be shallow and crass.  I've never liked others telling me how to live anyway, which is one of the main reasons I ended up deconverting.

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I tried a few times, but generally found them to be shallow and crass.

 

Well put. I also saw devotionals as shallow. I didn't want to just scratch the surface; I wanted to delve deep.

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