Our Apostasy: How Does It Square With Your Understanding Of The Bible?

[Leo]

Agreed with the last post.

I do actually wish more Christians would respond to this topic, especially in light of all our extimonies and other posts on here, in particular the way we manage relationships, and care for the Christian spouse or family members. You see quite the opposite behavior on blogs dedicated to the Christian spouse in an unequally yoked relationship.

Thoughts?

[♦ Fuego ♦]

(An edited clip from my book "Leaving Jesus")

The scriptures draw a very black and white picture of reality, and portray unbelievers as willfully rebellious children of the devil, pigs, dogs, weeds to be uprooted and burned (Matt 13:24-43), immoral, and generally corrupt and evil. The natural tendency of believers is to shun and dissociate from ex-believers, because they assume we left to pursue lust, perversion, indulgence, alcohol, gambling, dancing, rock music, sports, or just about anything secular or sinful.

 

This is a defense mechanism on their part. It helps them feel like part of the “in crowd” by demeaning others in an almost racist way. Most people realize that to get an honest appraisal of the cultures and characteristics of blacks and Jews, one should not consult books by the Ku Klux Klan. Yet the Bible is trusted as a source of truth about general human nature, though it has very skewed views of anyone outside of the faith. Because the insults and lies are on the pages of scripture, believers bow to the voice of authority, adopt this racist-like attitude, and stop questioning whether or not it is true.

 

2 Peter 2 Ooga-booga! Dogs returning to their vomit, pigs wallowing in filth, slaves of depravity speaking empty words. Or not.

 

2 Thessalonians 2:10b-12  Paul is saying that unbelievers really already know that Jesus is God and the Bible is all true, but they refuse it and reject it, and then end up deluded because they love their wickedness so much. Balderdash! Also notice that in this verse God is the one that sends delusion. Doesn't stack up well with "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked" (Ezek 18:23)

 

John 3:19-21 Jesus says that we avoid the light because our deeds are evil. That never made sense to me, since in order to repent one had to come into the light and admit his deeds were evil! After 30 years of confessing sins and rabidly seeking God, I saw enough evidence to conclude that I had been tricked from the beginning and was able to reject the lies of faith in Jesus.

 

Romans 1:18-20 Paul preaching to the choir about how very obvious god is from looking at nature. Of course, he didn't convert to Judaism by looking at nature, he was raised in a strict Jewish home, indoctrinated from youth, and became a Pharisee.

[Neverlandrut]

Agreed with the last post.

I do actually wish more Christians would respond to this topic, especially in light of all our extimonies and other posts on here, in particular the way we manage relationships, and care for the Christian spouse or family members. You see quite the opposite behavior on blogs dedicated to the Christian spouse in an unequally yoked relationship.

Thoughts?

I think there is just a fundament difference between how we and fundamentalist, evangelical Christians approach apostasy. This particular type of Christian sees that it is her duty to change another person to her beliefs (the primary focus of evangelicals is to evangelize). They will see no other option for an unbelieving spouse than that said spouse changes and believes again. This is my wife's position. However, it comes into conflict with other biblical and foundational human values, namely autonomy and respect. Modern evangelical Christianity teaches to win the lost at all costs. It also teaches that accepting Jesus must be one's personal choice for it to be effective in bringing about salvation. It also teaches not to judge lest ye be judged. It's not hard to see that the first of these three is in conflict with the latter two. Winning the lost is the highest priority, but respect for a person's free choice must stand, and passing judgment on such a person is discouraged. My wife is facing this conflict and realizing that she cannot force me to believe, not because I'm stubbornly refusing, but because I literally can not believe.

[Leo]

I think in my own Wife's case, She has left it in God's hands. She has never referred to the apostasy verses. I have, in my own mind, as a part of deconversion. I should have expected, if the bible were accurate, to observe certain changes in character, when I could no longer believe. Or, rather, when I was no longer trying to make myself believe.

I'm not sure how much I really believed since my early 20s, when I went through a fiery Christian phase. But i certainly made a very good faith effort.

To be fair to Christians: It isn't Christians who are talking about apostates. It's their texts. One verse in Peter's epistle, I believe it is, states that we were never true Christians: "They went out from us, but they were not really of us ..." I may have the epistle wrong. But anyway, a bit of the No True Scottsman fallacy. Especially in light of the pastors and missionaries who have left the faith.

Other Christians have not been the ones throwing the apostate verses in my face: I threw them in my face, as it were, as a final test of veracity of Scriptures.

As an apostate, I should by definition be worse off, less concerned with human beings, more self-centered. Even Romans 1, minus the gay issue, refers indirectly to a love grown cold.

My reason for calling on Christians on this site to examine apostasy, and what they see of us, is simple: There will be no PTSD type problems for them if they do so. We are, after all, images on the Internet. We're not asking them to examine a family member or friend who is now an apostate, one whose face and voice they can readily imagine being tormeented. It's as near to an unbiased experience in this regard as they could be asked to have, us, over the Internet.

Certainly they will see some heated emotions on this site, not unlike the Christians who get defensive on Facebook and elsewhere. Every place you find human beings, you find heated emotions sometimes.

But i'm talking the types of monstrosities the Scriptures talk about when they refer to apostates. Where are these moral monsters?

If any write back to us, to explain their view, it's my hope they're intellectually honest enough to not resort to the "hidden sin" fallacy of Dr. Comings in the 19th century, or the "atheism in the sex organs" fallacy of Dr. Dinesh D'Souza of the 20th / 21st.

We're behind a keyboard. Nobody is going to trace us down and punch us in the face or give us a sharp rebuke. So, surely, if Scripture was accurate, you should see the characteristics of moral monstrosity coming through from us. To the Christian, I merely ask that you look at us, and either counter the argument that we're not moral monsters, or explain away the Scriptures that indicate for all to read, what it is we allegedly are.

[Neverlandrut]

Agreed.  Most Christians I know are good, moral, well meaning people.   I have yet to have scripture thrown in my face regarding apostasy, mostly, I think, because my friends and family are smart enough to know better.  They know that my atheism came from a rejection of the bible as truth.  Therefore using scripture would be futile.  They also know that I know scripture better than most of them (I did as a Christian too).  That aside, I have had Pascal's Wager given to me in different ways, which is always fun to shoot down (this has always been in polite discussion by the way, no hostility).  I really think that most believers, deep down, recognize the possibility that Christianity isn't true.  Because of this, Pascal's Wager is a major motivation for them to hold onto their beliefs.  They don't realize that the Wager is based on an unfounded assumption on top of an unfounded assumption, that there is an afterlife and that correct/false beliefs determine your condition in the afterlife.  Also, when you realize that Christianity is no more probable than any other conception of the supernatural, you can easily imagine a god who rewards honest skepticism rather than blind faith.  In that case, the wager flips.  Early in my deconversion, Pascal's Wager was major thorn in my mind.  Needless to say, it isn't any more. 

[seven77]

I have had my apostasy thrown in my face numerous times. Suffice to say, I don't really care much anymore.

 

If God gives the apostates over to homosexual urges, well, that works for me. Beats trying to be someone I'm not to fit some mold that is quite broken, I think.

 

Am I like a dog returning to vomit? No, I don't believe so. I didn't return to using drugs or doing other things. I stopped having faith. Whoo.

 

Since my former church didn't teach about Hell, I never feared going there. It was a vague threat, but the "truth" about Hell was that it was eternal seperation from God. What is that, really? Wanting to talk to God, but being unable to do so? Desiring that relationship but being unable to have it? Existing in a void? No one really knew what it was, except for that it was bad and something best avoided by continued belief in God and the wonders of his holy word.

 

Do you see a bunch of reprobates on this site? How does what you see here square with the verses in Peter and the other epistles talking about us apostates? If you have read any of our personal accounts, how does that square with what you read in your bible?

 

One more thing to fellow exChristians:

Did you ever hear testimony of exChristians dying, falling into disaster, or something similar?

 

 

Some ex-c's are more reprobate than others.

 

I think that most of the people here are decent folks who simply left faith for one reason or another and enjoy the company of others who have made similar changes in their lives. We certainly aren't a bunch of pigs or dogs or possessed by demons.

 

I never had fears about those who left the faith. I was raised in a non-believing home, experimented with Paganism and Satanism, became a Christian as a young adult, and decided that Christianity wasn't for me after 5 years in the fold. For me, not believing was the norm. It was very difficult for me to live my life as a believer because my family did not support my decision to be a Christian. In short, I didn't think it was a big deal to be an apostate, because everyone that I really love was an apostate on some level. My parents and siblings have all had experiences with Christianity and left it for one reason or another.

 

I know the Bible says a lot of bad things about the lukewarm, the non-believers, unbelief, those that turn their backs on Him, blah blah blah. It's all noise to me now.

 

I've never heard or read testimony of ex-c's who have fallen into hard times AND thought of their circumstances as a consequence of leaving the faith. Most people who leave the faith do so knowing full well that leaving will throw a wrench into things and make their lives a great deal harder. Once someone leaves the faith, they often discover science, maths, philosophy and other things that enhance their lives a great deal and enable them to work through their issues. Others may seek counseling or find talking on the messageboards or chat room therapeutic. We all face hard times and those hard times are not due to God's wrath or any such thing.

[Aggie]

I find myself to be the same fallible person I always was.  The best part is for me that I can stop pretending that I know the secrets of the universe and have an assurance that speculative metaphysical ideas are definitely true.

 

Religions (as well as non-religious philosophies) have rightly noticed how people enveloped in greed, pride, anger, hate, dishonesty, lust, and the rest tend to be destructive of self and others.  Religion can be just another one of these consuming and self-destructive behaviors.

[Orbit]

I think I might be the exception to the rule. My life didn't change at all when I deconverted. My behavior didn't change. I've never worried about being an apostate, and never bothered looking up verses about it. I think this is because my religious family is in another state and most of my friends are non-believers so my "apostasy" isn't being constantly brought up. I think your social network has a lot to do with how you think about your apostasy. I find religious people annoying, to be honest, so no religious friends to deal with.

[Deva]

I say just be kind.  I don't even expect that anymore.  Common courtesy isn't so common anymore.

 

I think Jesus was probably kind to the poor and marginalized people (including women) of his time. That is according to what is written. That is one thing I read. Let's keep that and throw out all the stuff about the atonement.  I am pretty much good with that.

 

Sorry if that doesn't relate much to this thread.  I have had a difficult day.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

Hugs Deva.

[directionless]

I think Christianity made me a better person by giving a sense of purpose and hope.

 

I don't give money to charity now. I keep telling myself I need to start giving to charity again, but I never get around to it.

[pawn]

I am BY FAR, HAPPIER THAN EVER IN MY LIFE SINCE I GAVE UP THE FAITH ABOUT A YEAR AGO!!!

 

PRAISE THE .... RATIONAL HUMAN BRAIN!!!  YAY!

 

APOSTACY ROCKS!   Hey Christians, this is what I think of your judgmental religion:

[★ Citsonga ★]

For fellow ex-Christians:

Have you looked at the texts the Bible claims to say about us? How do they square with what is really going on in your life? They talk about returning to wicked ways. Have you done any returning at all? What wicked ways? They talk about our state being worse than if we had not tasted at all. Does that square with you?

 

...Did you ever hear testimony of exChristians dying, falling into disaster, or something similar?

 

I was raised in an Arminian version of Christianity and taught that Christians could turn away from the faith due to moral weaknesses. As I grew in the faith I became closer to Calvinism due to realizing through studying the Bible that there is a lot of scriptural support for the doctrine of perseverance of the saints, so I arrived at the conclusion that anyone leaving the faith was never really a Christian to begin with.

 

However, my own deconversion didn't fit either view. I did not succumb to moral weaknesses, nor was I one who never truly believed. My path away from Christianity was entirely intellectual in nature, realizing that the Bible is not at all what Christians make it out to be and that Christianity is a farce. My full story and many of my reasons can be found in the two links in my signature, so I won't go into much detail here, but suffice it to say that my so-called "loss of faith" was an enlightening rather than simply a walking away. I'm still pretty much the same person I was before, holding truth, integrity and love in high regard. I still work hard and take care of my family, and I try to treat all people fairly. I've never been perfect, but I've always tried my best to be a good person, and I still do.

 

I have become more open-minded as a nonbeliever, though. For example, I no longer view gays as depraved. I recognize that there's nothing wrong with them; they're just as deserving of fair treatment and understanding as the rest of us. That's just an honest assessment of reality (as opposed to having to conform my thoughts to the mindset of the ancient ignorant people who wrote the homophobic crap in the Bible).

 

I will say that I do think there are some exchristians whose reasons were not intellectual. Some probably do still believe what they were indoctrinated with, but find it difficult to live up to the standards that have been placed on them. I would argue that those are the ones who are most likely to return to the faith, and therefore those are the ones that Christians hear the "testimonies" from when they go back to the church, and that in turn adds more fuel to Christians' belief that we're all just rejecting what we know is true because we want to "sin." However, that is not at all the case for a great many of us, but they're not going to hear "testimonies" from us, because those of us who leave for intellectual reasons are FAR less likely to ever go back to what we've discovered is a lie.

[Leo]

Love that last post. Interesting how you said you're not perfect. Perfection is the unbeatable straw man created by religion. There is no perfection anywhere in the universe. What a relief when I finally discovered that! And then I thought it through: Perfection could not have created a situation where imperfection could exist, because then it would not be perfection. So, you're not perfect. Nothing ever is, or ever was. You see a perfectly smooth piece of glass? Then we hand you a high-powered electron microscope and you see all the craters and pits in it. It's all over the place. Perfection is the straw man placed up there for all to live up to, and none cannot.

I see we have no Christians returning to entertain this discussion. I realize we are all expressing things outside of how the Bible and popular Christian culture portray the ex-believer. I also say woo hoo to the rational brain, as stated earlier.

[★ Citsonga ★]

I agree completely about perfection. There are people who act as if they're perfect, though. I was simply clarifying that even though I consider myself to be leading a good life, I don't see myself as perfect. Anyway, thanks for the comments.

[1AcceptingAThiest1]

if everyone is..NOT perfect then that is agreeign with the bible when it says people are...NOT perfect. But the question is WHY cant we be perfect? why? because we are human? why cant humans be perfect? what makes us NOT able to BE perfect?

[Deidre]

The Bible breeds fear. Those passages are designed to instill fear. During my Christian days, I remember thinking, 'oh, I don't want to ever leave the faith and end up like that.'

 

''That'' would certainly send me to hell, a place where there is endless gnashing of teeth.

 

I wasted so many years worried all the time, about everything. The Bible creates this worrisome mentality. That any minute, you will be deemed unworthy to spend all of eternity in heaven, and so you don't want to end up like 'that.'

 

I believe that there are 'wicked' people in the world, certainly. But, many of them are ''practicing Christians.'' Oh snap.

[TrueFreedom]

To expect perfection from your children at pain of death is unreasonable and abusive.  All that we need is love and little training, and we're all fine.  The very idea of perfection is absurd.

[Leo]

Why can't sinless objects like stars, or even atoms, be perfect? The closer you look at something, the more you see its imperfections. If perfection were possible, we would see it somewhere in the universe. If perfection did exist, it could not be hindered by imperfection, because it would be perfect. If perfection did exist, it could not create imperfection, because to do so is an act of imperfection.

I admit it: I think like an engineer because I am an engineer. Design arguments are well within my realm of understanding because I design and implement things for a living.

During one Men's Christian discipleship group, the teacher went on about how if you add a drop of sewage into a container of pure water, that water would not be pure anymore. To illustrate a single sexual thought would render you impure. So I asked if we could perform a test on some 'pure' water, his choice, and let's see how pure it is. There are pool kits that let you test for trace chemicals. I further stated that pure water does not conduct electricity, it's the impurities in the water that conduct electricity. Anybody want to put their hand in a pan of distilled water, with bare wires in it plugged into an electric current? You'd better not, even if the pan is plastic, even if the water is distilled. Further, people from other nations who come to the U.S. can get sick from our water just as we can going to theirs. Know why? We have all kinds of bacteria and amoeba living in our water supply as well. Infection / impurity of the water is measured by degree.

You want to use the 0 and 1 analogy? It's 0 or it's 1? Except there are an infinite number of possibilities between 0 and 1. Everything from 0.0 followed by an infinite number of 0s followed by a 1, to 0.9 followed by an infinite number of 9s.

How about pure light? You only see light as it reflects off objects. Even I, who cannot see at all, knows this. And every object that reflects the light back to you absorbs some of the photons traveling at different wavelengths. Think that's pure white snow? Pure white wool? Could get a light spectrometer or similar instrument, and find out. It is also very difficult to create the total absence of light. Find a migraine sufferer who can see. One blessing of being blind: I get migraines but since I can't see light, I have only four senses to assail me then. But though this person shuts the curtains, covers herself up with blankets and holds her eyes shut, light still gets in. Might look like dark, but light is still there.

There is no pure water, just drinkable water and distilled water. There is no pure light, just light reflected from surfaces that absorbed some photons. There's no pure vacuum in space: just sparse matter. This isn't what the Christians call relativism. The idea they call relativism, I don't like any more than they do, ironically, that same idea is what justifies their god's immoral acts. This is simple physical science explained. if perfection existed, sinless lifeless existent objects somewhere would express it. Add to that, logically speaking, a perfect designer could not design an imperfect system, nor could s/he design a system that could deteriorate into imperfection as described by the Fall.  That's a logical impossibility.

I'd be willing to take up design as a debate on this board with you if you've an interest. Design concepts and how they could apply to a designing entity. I'm reasonably well read on Scripture, but admittedly nowhere near the members on here educated in Christian universities and Christian scholarship. But design concepts, mechanics, engineering I do know. Even if I am in one specific field of one discipline, the concepts are the same everywhere. I'm not going to pull an inverse of Ken Ham, and put up fantastic mathematical formulas that disprove what can't be proven or disproven. Formulas like that always have a lot of holes and can be shown for what they are with enough mathematical discipline, and I confess, mathematician I am not. But simple design logic, in my opinion, disproves the notion of perfection creating a platform from which imperfection can exist. If that doesn't interest you, you may want to check out what's being done by the Artificial Intelligence community. Protip: we develop things completely backwards to how Yahweh allegedly did it, and our things self-maintain, sometimes regenerate and even mutate / evolve, and carry out instructions. Ours also have knowledge that competes with their agency, while the inverse is true for Adam and Eve.

Kinda strayed from the apostasy topic, but wanted to follow this through on the Perfection front. Ironically, the ex-Christian John Loftus explains it as a philosopher, which really got me thinking, and I confess, diagramming just a bit, and doing a bit of figuring. And making me wonder how I didn't see this simple engineering problem before.

[Deidre]

To expect perfection from your children at pain of death is unreasonable and abusive.  All that we need is love and little training, and we're all fine.  The very idea of perfection is absurd.

qft!

 

The whole idea behind 'striving to be like Christ in his perfection,' is basically to keep people enslaved to the cult. If you read this book daily, if you pray daily, if you come to church every week, if you tithe of your earnings weekly, if you keep clinging to this cult, you will be on your way to perfection.

 

The ideas contained in the Bible at first blush, seem moral. Seem worth striving for. But, taking a deeper dive, it's apparent that it's all about instilling fear and creating this dependency upon the religion itself, and not necessarily ''God.''

[directionless]

On the question of perfection, it seems like we need a good definition. Perfectly smooth surfaces and so forth is too narrow IMO. I might describe a lop-sided chocolate chip cookie as perfection.

 

From the Christian perspective maybe we could define perfection to mean: "according to God's plan". We might say that everything is perfect in the sense that God created the framework according to his plan. However maybe God deliberately created randomness as part of this framework so that the universe would move forward in time and create surprises. God might need to nudge the universe periodically to keep these surprises from deviating too far from perfection, but in a way the surprises and rich complexity are part of the plan.

 

Of course there is the problem of things that seem evil to humans like the Ebola virus. Ebola doesn't seem anywhere close to God's plan. Maybe a Christian would say that "the fall" (whatever that was) somehow limited God's ability to nudge the universe and keep it close to perfection.

 

BTW: I'm just trying to think like a Christian might about this problem for the sake of discussion. Sometimes I like to imagine that a loving creator God of some kind exists. I was watching the birds today and feeling like it would be nice if God exists to care for them.

[Aggie]

if everyone is..NOT perfect then that is agreeign with the bible when it says people are...NOT perfect. But the question is WHY cant we be perfect? why? because we are human? why cant humans be perfect? what makes us NOT able to BE perfect?

 

It is difficult to say why people are the way they are.  It seems much more difficult to believe that a loving God cursed all of humanity because a mythical snake convinced a mythical man to eat a piece of fruit from a magic tree-- thus necessitating that this loving God sacrifice his human self to appease himself so that those who accepted his highly dubious stories would be spared from being tormented forever...

 

I would say that we're not perfect because a perfect God did not make us...

[Bayard]

After leaving Christianity I found that philosophy is basically religion with rationality instead of mythical crap as its foundation. At first I gravitated towards Schopenhauerian pessimism, but now my personal philosophy lies closer to stoicism (minus the teleological beliefs of the ancient stoics). I feel that I've become a more ethical and virtuous person since leaving Christianity because I now do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing, rather than for some expectation of divine favor as when I was a believer.

[Brother Jeff]

I don't give a flying fuck what the Bible says about anything anymore. I am a much better person now than I was when I was a Christian. I'm a lot older and lot wiser, more compassionate, more understanding, more empathetic -- much better all around! There's nothing like religion that has the power to warp the moral compass of those who believe in it beyond recognition. I was there once, and I am so happy to be FREE! Glory!

[Thought2Much]

I rate "Very Dull" on the Apostate's Evil in Thought, Word, and Deed Scale^TM.

 

When I was a xian, I rated "Very Dull" on the Xian's Evil in Thought, Word and Deed Scale^TM.

 

I may have to rename myself "sub-amateur."

 

This could very well have been me posting this. If there were a competition for "World's Most Boring Human," I think I could make it to the semifinals at the very least.