Evangelized to Three Times in Two Days?! >:(

[xSilverPhinx]

This could be turned into a good horror story.

[Ildiko]

Ah well.  Idle dark fantasies about exposing the futility of religion.  Please, disregard the melodrama.  It's been another hell of a day.  At least there was no evangalizing going on, though.

Oh poo! In the hope of giving you a giggle before the end of the day ... true story.

I'm in Italy, and last year I was sitting in a hospital waiting room next to a nun. Out of the blue she offered me a rosary. So I said thanks but no thanks, I'm not a Catholic ... in fact, I'm not even a Christian. She looked astonished for a moment, then light dawned. "Oh!" she said, with great interest, "Are you one of those evangelicals?"

[Tristan Jay]

In the hope of giving you a giggle before the end of the day ... true story.

I'm in Italy, and last year I was sitting in a hospital waiting room next to a nun. Out of the blue she offered me a rosary. So I said thanks but no thanks, I'm not a Catholic ... in fact, I'm not even a Christian. She looked astonished for a moment, then light dawned. "Oh!" she said, with great interest, "Are you one of those evangelicals?"

  Thanks Ildiko!   

[Gawen]

I'm not quite living life as an atheist as yet, however recent events have really made me feel the kind of indignation I imagine a lot of other people here probably feel.

Hell, it's a lot more than indignation!  Outrage, condescension, and despair are also what I felt.  I've spent a lot of time raging about how stupid, psychopathic, homicidal, genocidal, manipulative and morally bankrupt the God of the Bible seems, and perhaps I had it coming. 

I keep telling myself that at the end of the day, whatever God thinks he is supposed to be, I can really only devote so much energy to such a worthless pursuit anyway.  There are so many better things to do in this world, and so many more useful mentalities to cultivate as I go about living my life.

I don't spend a lot of time in this particular forum...so I'm really late.

I haven't read the entire thread yet, but your words above caught me right away. I am not a good friend when it comes to matters such as this. I lack, sadly, the empathy needed to help or guide or even offer an opinion to a person through conundrums like this simply because I never lost the faith. I never had faith, especially the religious kind; I had nothing to lose. I cannot relate - no frame of reference - to a person going through that what you feel.
But I shall try anyway...

I never felt the indignation, outrage, condescension, and despair over God. "God" is meaningless to me. "God exists" is meaningless.  "God is________" equally meaningless. And I would wager you would have a very good idea why I think that. But I do feel those things about the believers who believe that their god is the opposite of stupid, psychopathic, homicidal, genocidal, manipulative and morally bankrupt. That, however, is neither here nor there.

Unlike so many people that wonder and despair their way to discover WHY they lost their faith and in many cases fight their way to regain it, I had come to wonder and discover why I NEVER HAD faith, when so many others do. But my fight did not materialize to have that which I never had. No. The more I learnt, the more I uncovered...the more my fight takes shape to show believers that faith is not a viable worldview. My signature:
The essence of the mind is not in what it thinks, but how it thinks. Faith is the surrender of our mind; of reason and our skepticism to put all our trust or faith in someone or something that has no good evidence of itself. That is a sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith is not.

My earliest remembrance of my beginning to (diligently) try to understand why I had no faith started back in the late 80's. Of course, there is a back story to this, but will not bore you with the details. Anyway, my cousin and I had a bit of discourse over predetermination. I decided to ask his minister about it. I grew up Presbyterian and went to my cousin's Presby church to ask. Presbyterianism is Calvanistic and the minister could not answer my questions without a lot of gobbledegook. I went back one other time after researching predeterminism (remember, this is pre-internet) and left somewhat angry and with more questions unanswered than answered and even more questions forming.

Then, my cousin gave me a book called The Lost Books of the Bible. It contained all the non-canonical stories left out of the Bible. Well, that didn't fracking help at all. But the game was on now...sort of. I left it alone until the mid 90's when an internet friend and I got into a discussion about Jehovah's Witnessess (which she was). I decided how lacking in information I was about Christianity and decided to investigate.

This is where I leave you in my overlong narrative. The moral of the story is....investigate. Investigate religion, spirituality, etc., without feelings, knowing that your heart does not think, but your brain does. Yes, there are so many other things to do with your life. But the one bugging you at this time needs looking into...or again, I wager...you will not be happy with the outcome, whatever shape it may take.

[Tristan Jay]

Thanks Gawen, for taking the time to share that, really.  It's interesting to hear your perspective on all that.  I'm interested in knowing (if you know) what your cousin's rational was for lending you The Lost Books of the Bible.  I'm familiar with the book, and I'm under the impression that some of the books are basically early christian fiction that resembles biblical narration.

The moral of the story is....investigate. Investigate religion, spirituality, etc., without feelings, knowing that your heart does not think, but your brain does. Yes, there are so many other things to do with your life. But the one bugging you at this time needs looking into...or again, I wager...you will not be happy with the outcome, whatever shape it may take.

I hope you'll bear with me here, because your substantial post leads to this key paragraph, and I want to understand the nuances of what your saying.  Can you re-word or elaborate on the first and last sentence of the paragraph?  I'm preoccupied with being able to better appreciate what you're conveying here.

One final comment on your signature, I agree that faith is problematic, especially in the face of cold, hard facts.  Something that I watch more closely these days is the apologetics arguments that Christians use to try and show that the Christian religion holds up when examined with reason.  It's been curious to see how when they reach the point of becoming a circular argument, and the spinning is called out, at the end of the day it still comes down to "faith."  And at the end of the day, if God's a big boy and can speak up (being able to do everything), then there shouldn't be a need for letting his son's/his own sacrifice be left to chance out of doubt and the need for faith, when it would be so easy to just manifest and just say to everyone on the planet, "Ok, listen carefully, take notes if you like, and I'll repeat myself a couple times and respond to clarifying questions; so, here's how it is..."  The whole faith thing just doesn't make sense; there's no reason to leave it up to faith.

I definitely plan to continue investigating.  When some questions cropped up, I made sure I got my Bible out of storage for reference.  I'm currently reading though Buddhist literature, there are some aspects about it that I've always been curious about.  My mind glazes over on occasion and I speed through the parts where everyone worships Buddha, it sure resembles the unfortunate divinity hyperbole that appears in the Bible, too.  Here and there are thought provoking dashes of wisdom that are meant to be practical approaches in life, so my brain enjoys munching on those tidbits.

[Gawen]

TJ, sorry I'm late in responding. The Corinthians thread takes up a lot of time. Tonight when I get home I'll get back with you.
But I have a bit of time for the first part.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_apocrypha

And then there is the Nag Hammadi Library - while not apocryphal or pseudepigraphic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library

Anyway, my cousin's motivation stemmed from my queries. He thought that if I couldn't get quite into the Bible proper, the stuff left out of it might jog me. It actually made it worse.

[Gawen]

I hope you'll bear with me here, because your substantial post leads to this key paragraph, and I want to understand the nuances of what your saying.  Can you re-word or elaborate on the first and last sentence of the paragraph?  I'm preoccupied with being able to better appreciate what you're conveying here.

Well, like I said above, I had no faith to start with and I wanted to know why I didn't. So I investigated the Bible. I still do and it's been 20 years since I started. Those of you that had faith and have lost it, well, you need to investigate why you lost it. There is a multitude of reasons why people lose their faith, but do they really REALLY understand why they lost it? And those that lost their faith, do they understand why they want it back?

When I started my search, there was no emotional value or need. It was a simple question....why? I did however mislead myself in thinking it would be an easy search. Just simply investigating Christianity is not...simple. I learnt a long time ago Christianity was for me, in my opinion, hogwash. But I still investigate it, leaving out emotional values. Consider it an investigation using reason, cognitive thinking skills and the like. The same is applied to Islam and Buddhism, etc. If you leave out the emotional values, you think more clearly.

The last sentence in question considers the fact that atheism is not for you, for whatever reason. It is possible that you may find another sort of religion or spirituality that appeals to. That's what I mean by "whatever shape it may take." If this may be the case, that some other sort of religion suits you, you should investigate why it suits you. Odds are there is some sort of emotional value in that equation.

One final comment on your signature, I agree that faith is problematic, especially in the face of cold, hard facts.  Something that I watch more closely these days is the apologetics arguments that Christians use to try and show that the Christian religion holds up when examined with reason.  It's been curious to see how when they reach the point of becoming a circular argument, and the spinning is called out, at the end of the day it still comes down to "faith."  And at the end of the day, if God's a big boy and can speak up (being able to do everything), then there shouldn't be a need for letting his son's/his own sacrifice be left to chance out of doubt and the need for faith, when it would be so easy to just manifest and just say to everyone on the planet, "Ok, listen carefully, take notes if you like, and I'll repeat myself a couple times and respond to clarifying questions; so, here's how it is..."  The whole faith thing just doesn't make sense; there's no reason to leave it up to faith.

Very well said!

I definitely plan to continue investigating.  When some questions cropped up, I made sure I got my Bible out of storage for reference.  I'm currently reading though Buddhist literature, there are some aspects about it that I've always been curious about.  My mind glazes over on occasion and I speed through the parts where everyone worships Buddha, it sure resembles the unfortunate divinity hyperbole that appears in the Bible, too.  Here and there are thought provoking dashes of wisdom that are meant to be practical approaches in life, so my brain enjoys munching on those tidbits.

That was very well said as well. It is fine and dandy to pluck tidbits out of text, religious/spiritual or otherwise, just keep using that critical eye.