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Goodbye Jesus

I Need Help


Guest Zenislev

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Anyway, I thank you all again for helping me, things seem to be coming to an end... I just need to find out how to come to a final conclusion on the matter... I need this to be ended once and for all, not just a lingering sort of faith that persists and troubles me until it finally whimpers its final breath.

Oh wow. I can't tell you how much I felt my heart aching at all this. There's tears in my eyes. It's the story of my heart when I was where you are at now, all those years ago as a Bible College student. I had to face it as you are. I couldn't devote my life to persuading people to devote their lives to something that was in such conflict within me! It was a choice of sincerity before God to face it head on. It's why to this day I say the word "Sincerity" is in fact the most sacred word.

 

I will say something to you here. "The end" will become more of a beginning. It will be a process, but it will take you places that you're heart has taken you to here with. It will keep going. Who you are will really, truly begin to emerge as you get past the pains of disappointments. You'll find the truth has always been what's there in you now. Follow that. If there is a God, to me he/it is honored by the sincerity of the heart. Follow that. It will take you to yourself, and to the real truth that is who you are.

 

Man.. hang in there. It's times like this that makes me feel hope in this world.

 

Keith

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And reading rest of your post... you're sure you're not a long-lost twin to me or something??? :HaHa:

I was thinking more like a time warp sort of twin like... :HaHa:

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Zenislev I have been reading your posts here. I have to say that I admire you. Not every one prefers truth over comfort. And not everyone has the courage to share their inner struggles with others. Bravo.

 

My only concern for you at this time is what is going to happen to you after this struggle. I am wondering how those Christians around you will treat you when they discover that your faith has changed. And I also wonder how your desire to serve God will now manifest itself.

 

But whatever difficulties you encounter I wish you the very best. Antlerman has used the word sincerity. I will use the word integrity. You strike me as a person of integrity, and I think it’s beautiful.

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And reading rest of your post... you're sure you're not a long-lost twin to me or something??? :HaHa:

I was thinking more like a time warp sort of twin like... :HaHa:

Ooooh... maybe Zen comes from another dimension? Maybe he's me, but from the planet Zurgo in the 52nd dimension... Cooool.... I always felt I had some special connection to the outerworderly. (Is that even a word?)

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Oh and by the way, I should probably have specified my beliefs a bit more. I'm an Independent Fundamental Baptist, if that makes sense to any of you all. I believe the Bible is to be taken literally and therefore have come to be a Young Earth Creationist (probably fighting words around here..). Anyway, that is what I firmly believe, that the Bible is to be taken literally. I guess that might help in what advice you all give. Anyway, thanks again.

 

 

Huh, I'm not sure what to tell someone like you. I read your first post, and then you follow up by telling us you believe in the literal interpretation of the bible, and are a young earth creationist. I just thought that was funny given a line in your previous post:

 

"I just can't find that point, or that one piece of evidence that I can't explain away."

 

So, somehow, you can explain away all of the evidence that the universe and the earth are billions of years old? You can explain away all of the evidence that shows we and every living creation on the planet evolved? You can explain why there are thousands of mistakes found in the manuscripts of the bible? You can explain away all of the evidence that debunks biblical claims of a flat earth, chud chewing rabbits, the flood, and other ridiculous ideas?

 

I think it's great that you aren't afraid to question your religion, but I question how much research you've actually done. It's one thing to hold onto some sort of watered version of christianity, but to continue to be a fundy of all things doesn't mesh with someone who's done real research.

 

 

As someone else says, you need to approach this at a different angle. Rather than trying to prove christianity wrong, you need to prove it right. I believe I can actually prove christianity wrong, but that aside, how many religions do you think you can actually prove wrong? Can you prove all of the gods/godesses from other religions don't exist? Does it really matter? No, because until there's evidence for something, there's no reason to believe it in the first place. Stop trying to prove christianity wrong and start seeing if it can be proven right to begin with. You jumped to your conclusion before you looked at the evidence. Apply the same level of skepticism to christianity that you do to all other religions. Back to square one.

 

Tell you what, if you're really curious, I can send you a .txt file with a lot of arguments I've come up with over the years in my deconversion. They will make you look at the bible in a different way. Let me know if you're interested, because, to be honest, I don't think you've done enough hard core searching to merit a longer response. Private message me for the file if you're interested.

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Zen,

 

Here's one of the facts I learned, that just completely made me realize that our world cannot be 6,000 years old. And I suspect you will appreciate this, and research this on your own, because I have a feeling you're one of the more scientific minded kinds.

 

In 1987 there were a supernova observed by the scientists. It's called SN1987A. After it exploded, a while after (I don't remember if it was days or weeks), they could observe reflections of the light from the supernova from a nearby nebula. (Research this, because I'm taking it from memory so I just repeat what I can remember). They could time the explosion and the reflection very precisely (speed of light being constant, they know the distance), and they can calculate the angle from us to these two points. Now, with simple trigonometry, it should be fairly easy to calculate the distance to the supernova, and from knowing the exact distance, we would be able to calculate (speed of light again) how long ago this event happened.

 

What do you think the result was? About 150,000 (and some) light years away = 150,000 years. God wouldn't create this "event" as a misleading and deceiving "event", so the answer usually is "the speed of light has changed", but it doesn't help, because if it had changed, the distance between the supernova and the cloud would be as far between as in correlation to how the distance from us would increase and the time length would pretty much stay the same. So it is 150,000 years old, without any other explanation. Now does that fit with 6,000 years?

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Either way, for at least 2 years now I've been going through this, and have been constantly praying for God to show me the answer, to show me what I'm supposed to do, or how I'm supposed to believe, or to give me faith, but all to no avail.

 

I just can't settle for what seems like the best life; because honestly, living a life of faith and serving God is what I want to do. But something in me won't let me do that without KNOWING that it's true.

 

My wife and I always wanted to give everything to god. We left Germany, to live in a xian community. We wanted either all or nothing. One of my favourite songs during those days had been (Kevin Prosch) "Oh how can I be satisfied unless you come real and stay by my side....there has to be more."

 

Than came the doubts and here my big problem comes in, that there never has been a place for my doubts in church. You either believe it and stay to it or you can give up. I needed real answers, but all I got was "believe", "stay close to god", all this crap. Even the really experienced xians had no answers. And I am not talking about the "thinking stuff" (I was good in ignoring or discussing any good evidence against god). I missed a real relationship with a loving father in heaven. I have prayed like you for years, cried and NEVER got any answer. Oh, certainly I could have made up my own explanations. Maybe god wanted me to become an "adult in faith", so he ignored my cries. Just because he loved me. Maybe god wants me to try harder to believe, maybe god wants me to give up believing and just trust in him alone, so that it is not my work...only his. Maybe god wants this or that or something different or nothing at all?

The "body of christ" gave a shit about my doubts and me. They tried to feed me with the "trust in him"-stuff. As they noticed, that I am not satisfied, they stopped helping me, meet less with me and ignored me in the end. This family that was supposed to be forever just ignored me. I guess they have been afraid of my doubts, who knows?

 

So my "straw" has been the unheard prayers (for years, not just for a weekend) and the experience, that you can not live a radical life, when you have no god behind you, to support you.

 

It was a terrible situation to give up my faith, because my entire life was based on it. It was painful, but on the other hand a relieve. You need to get used to it. I am not into blasphemy since then, I do not steal, kill or cheat on my wife, I am a loving and caring father to my children and do my best to get a new spiritual input. Life and its struggles makes more sense since I gave up the idea of god.

 

I am sure you have asked "experienced" xians about your troubles. What have they said? It seems, that their answers could not help you and you are dealing with the proffesionals.

 

I would be glad if I could tell you something to comfort you in this situation (although you seem to be courageous person), but I have no idea what. Gods silence is not your fault, it is just that there is no god. You are fine as you are, no need to get accepted by any gods in this universe.

 

 

Sorry for writing that long. You do not have to answer. Just my thoughts when I read your post.

 

Best wishes

Michael

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Zen,

 

Here's one of the facts I learned, that just completely made me realize that our world cannot be 6,000 years old. And I suspect you will appreciate this, and research this on your own, because I have a feeling you're one of the more scientific minded kinds.

 

In 1987 there were a supernova observed by the scientists. It's called SN1987A. After it exploded, a while after (I don't remember if it was days or weeks), they could observe reflections of the light from the supernova from a nearby nebula. (Research this, because I'm taking it from memory so I just repeat what I can remember). They could time the explosion and the reflection very precisely (speed of light being constant, they know the distance), and they can calculate the angle from us to these two points. Now, with simple trigonometry, it should be fairly easy to calculate the distance to the supernova, and from knowing the exact distance, we would be able to calculate (speed of light again) how long ago this event happened.

 

What do you think the result was? About 150,000 (and some) light years away = 150,000 years. God wouldn't create this "event" as a misleading and deceiving "event", so the answer usually is "the speed of light has changed", but it doesn't help, because if it had changed, the distance between the supernova and the cloud would be as far between as in correlation to how the distance from us would increase and the time length would pretty much stay the same. So it is 150,000 years old, without any other explanation. Now does that fit with 6,000 years?

 

This reminds me of several people who argued that the universe is like a bicycle with an odometer on it, left running in mid air or perhaps on a treadmill for thousands of miles and then let go. The bicycle experiences all the wear and tear, and the odometer shows the mileage, but no journey has been made. They basically claim that God set things in their current places with their current appearance, or fast forwarded the universe to it's state 6000 years ago. They will do absolutely anything t make the universe fit the biblical account. I used to think that way too, once I stopped desperately wanting to believe in the god of the bible, I stopped having to make up excuses for him.

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This reminds me of several people who argued that the universe is like a bicycle with an odometer on it, left running in mid air or perhaps on a treadmill for thousands of miles and then let go. The bicycle experiences all the wear and tear, and the odometer shows the mileage, but no journey has been made. They basically claim that God set things in their current places with their current appearance, or fast forwarded the universe to it's state 6000 years ago. They will do absolutely anything t make the universe fit the biblical account. I used to think that way too, once I stopped desperately wanting to believe in the god of the bible, I stopped having to make up excuses for him.

That's an interesting idea. Basically it is saying that God let the Universe run without human life or life forms for 4.5 billions of years and then he created Earth with life. But that just makes me think: what's the difference? If the Universe would still have to run. And the notion that no journey has been made, the question is for whom and for what? If the stars life is measured in the time they exist and light is expelled and nuclear reactions are occurring, doing it in "mid air" (wherever that is) or "on the ground" (wherever that is), wouldn't make a difference. Basically is just a play with words without any meaning. The Universe time is the Universe time even if was done in God's bathtub or in his shed in the backyard. Time is time inside our sphere.

 

It's pretty much like if we imagine a game. In this game we create some intelligent and aware creatures. And we develop this game for some slow machine. Now we put this program in a fast machine. For us there's a difference in running it, in the first computer it takes longer and it the second it goes faster... but would the creatures in either world "feel" any different? All the events that happens will happens just as many times in both cases, and the "time" this creatures experience is relative to their own reality, hence they will not feel, know or think any different because they're running with a faster CPU. They wouldn't even know if we would pause the game at occasions and resume the play, because their experience is within the world, and not in our world. So the time would be 150,000 years for the first world (internal time), and it would be the same for the second world, only to us it would be two different times (external time).

 

So from this, there's no difference if God runs the Universe hanging from his ceiling at times, or brings it on a roadshow, the Universe time is what it is. The 6,000 years we are talking about is the Bible account for Our Universe Time, or our experience of time. So if the Universe was pre-run, then the Universe to us is older than 6,000 years old and again, the Bible is wrong. But on the other hand if 6,000 years is God's years, and not Universe years, then who can be right or wrong then? And doesn't that imply that God isn't non-temporal but actually very dependent on time? All in all, answers like that just shows that people don't think through and can't understand abstracts and concepts, and also even with an explanation like that, God still is deceiving by making the Universe look older. I've noticed that only when you can think without having to resort to making it work with a God/Bible concept, can you really understand things. With God/Bible you lose the ability, without God/Bible you lose constraints.

 

I've recently learned a little about the philosophical history in Christianity, and what's interesting is that it intentionally do reject reason. Faith is to be taken by intuition. It's (supposedly) the innate ability to "know" that God exists, without proof, and in disregard to proof. It's not just the notion we get from how Christians behave, but they don't know that the early Church fathers intentionally argued it.

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I believe the book of Genesis taken point for point literally (screw that metaphorical idea, that's never used anywhere other than in those evil liberal libraries), will match the best, most widely accepted theories in the sciences. Here's how. The Biblical inerrantist will usually hedge that belief by saying "in it's original form" which of course we don't have (and makes claims of having inerrant truth seem pretty moot at that point). So I'm just going to state on faith, that the Book of Genesis in its original form, which of course we don't have, squares perfectly with modern scientific theory. There, God said it (somewhere, He must have), I believe it, that settles it for me! :HaHa:

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This looks like a nearly done deal to me. Zen is examining the evidence. If he continues to be earnest about understanding life on Earth he is going to see that:

 

Organisms reproducing with heritable variation + many more organisms being born than will survive to reproduce + lots of time = evolution

 

There were a few years there when I was both a Christian and an adherent of evolution. But this meant that I could no longer read the Bible literally.

 

I hope Zen comes back soon and gives us an update.

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Genesis in its original form said:

 

In the beginning was a quantum even that sparked the big inflation, which we today call the Big Bang, and the Universe came into being.

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Genesis in its original form said:

 

In the beginning was a quantum even that sparked the big inflation, which we today call the Big Bang, and the Universe came into being.

 

I don't know that I buy the whole Big Bang scenario. To do so I would have to be willing to just accept physicists word on it. And I am not willing to do that.

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My wife and I always wanted to give everything to god. We left Germany, to live in a xian community. We wanted either all or nothing. One of my favourite songs during those days had been (Kevin Prosch) "Oh how can I be satisfied unless you come real and stay by my side....there has to be more."

 

Than came the doubts and here my big problem comes in, that there never has been a place for my doubts in church. You either believe it and stay to it or you can give up. I needed real answers, but all I got was "believe", "stay close to god", all this crap. Even the really experienced xians had no answers.

 

Michael, I found this post very moving. I always have the deepest respect for someone who wants to find out and actually tries to live the xtian life (as they understand it) in this world. I guess you could say I admire strong convictions, whether xtian or not.

 

 

Antlerman,

 

The Biblical inerrantist will usually hedge that belief by saying "in it's original form" which of course we don't have...

 

This was always the case. The Bible was true in all respects "in its original autographs". Then I found out they do not have anything like the "original autographs" in the King James Version (Scofield edition) which they were using in the Baptist Church. Its so transparently false. I wish I could shake them into wakefullness so they could see it.

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I don't know that I buy the whole Big Bang scenario. To do so I would have to be willing to just accept physicists word on it. And I am not willing to do that.

You just have to believe! And if you don't, you will suffer eternal damnation and torture in a Black Hole.

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I don't know that I buy the whole Big Bang scenario. To do so I would have to be willing to just accept physicists word on it. And I am not willing to do that.

You just have to believe! And if you don't, you will suffer eternal damnation and torture in a Black Hole.

:lmao::funny::lmao:

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Genesis in its original form said:

 

In the beginning was a quantum even that sparked the big inflation, which we today call the Big Bang, and the Universe came into being.

 

Ge.1:2 On the 3rd minute of the Creation, that which remained outnumbered that which was destroyed by a factor of 1 part per billion, and Matter overcame Antimatter and became the foundations of the heavens and the earth.

 

1:3 All things that came to be, came to be in this manner. All things that came into existence flowed forth from the divine Particles issuing forth from the throne of the New Heavens; Bayron begat Hadrons, who begat Deuterium, who begat Tritium, who begat Helium, who begat Hydrogen.

 

1:4 In the second day of the New Heavens, those of the house of Helium and Hydrogen formed a great alliance and lit the darkness with a new brilliance, whose light shone forth in the Void heralding the seeds of a new Universe.

 

1:5 Many children were born of the marriage of houses of Hydrogen and Helium: Lithium and Beryllium, Sodium and Magnesium, Potassium and Calcium, to the house of Nickle, to the house of Thallium, many more children became strong within the brightly shining house of the Sun, till the Great House collapsed upon itself in a fearful crush, sending forth all it's great children into the vast heavens around it to seed the universe for the Birth of Life.

 

1:6 Such began they days of great wanderings, till the forces of gravity pulled together the Children of the Sun to form new alliances, both great and small.

 

1.7 On the third day of the Great Inflation, the universe brought for a new star which drew the Children of the Great Suns to itself.

 

1:8 And behold there formed a great rock in space, and it was called Earth. The place from which all knowledge of the Creation was discovered.

 

1:9 And man did sin a great sin during those days of knowledge, as he created an image of himself and called it God, and had him reign over the hearts of other men with the fear of judgment and eternal tortures. Such were the follies in the hearts of the Priests of Sin.

 

1:10 But the Light of Reason shone forth in the darkness, bring forth the knowledge of the true creator.

 

 

 

Ok... enough of that now... :HaHa:

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1:9 And man did sin a great sin during those days of knowledge, as he created an image of himself and called it God, and had him reign over the hearts of other men with the fear of judgment and torment.

This one is my favorite Antlerman.

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1:9 And man did sin a great sin during those days of knowledge, as he created an image of himself and called it God, and had him reign over the hearts of other men with the fear of judgment and torment.

This one is my favorite Antlerman.

you caught it before a minor modification to it. I think we should start a running Bible Revision thread. What do you think?

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1:9 And man did sin a great sin during those days of knowledge, as he created an image of himself and called it God, and had him reign over the hearts of other men with the fear of judgment and torment.

This one is my favorite Antlerman.

you caught it before a minor modification to it. I think we should start a running Bible Revision thread. What do you think?

Funny, I've been kicking around the idea of writing my own myth, as sort of a creative exercise.

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Funny, I've been kicking around the idea of writing my own myth, as sort of a creative exercise.

I think it would be fun, and an interesting experiment in authorship. It would be like the Pentateuch being not written by one person (which it wasn't) but seeing the shift of style as in the "Books of Moses'" authors, the J, E, D, and P authors. Then we mix and match stories in after the fact editorials, so you have two different creations stories, from two different parts of the country (like the one's in the Bible), and so forth. Then... then... we have an ecumenical council and have political infighting to see who's books are kept in and who' we put into the trash can and hit the delete key! Then we set up protectors of the texts, and interpreters of it, etc, etc, :phew:

 

Sound fun? :HaHa:

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Sound fun? :HaHa:

 

Ummm.... no?

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The first page has to say something like:

Disclaimer:

This story is completely fictional, and any resemblance to any person living or from the past is purely coincidental.

Warning!

This product is in the State of California known to cause sudden urges in creating new religions or cults. Please refrain from any such tendencies, and if such emotions do occur, contact a psychiatrist or the nearest friendly atheist immediately.

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The first page has to say something like:

Disclaimer:

This story is completely fictional, and any resemblance to any person living or from the past is purely coincidental.

Warning!

This product is in the State of California known to cause sudden urges in creating new religions or cults. Please refrain from any such tendencies, and if such emotions do occur, contact a psychiatrist or the nearest friendly atheist immediately.

Placed in this Hotel Room for you by the Mensa's Club

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Sound fun? :HaHa:

 

Ummm.... no?

Heretic! Blasphemer!

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