What would it take to lose your faith?
If you claim to not have faith…what would it take to change your mind?
Faith is a mindset so “losing faith” is changing your mind.
This is not going to be easy to explain, since it didn’t happen all at once. But if I could sum this up, I would say I lost my belief for intellectual reasons, and also moral problems that I came across in The Bible.
The Covert Atheist shares the story of lost faith. I’m wary about the term “intellectual reasons” because it’s vague. I’m wary of “moral problems” because atheists can’t explain morality.
Back in high school, I was a fully fledged Christian who believed I could have a personal relationship with God; that I could talk to him and he would speak to me back. It sounded pretty awesome huh?
Fully fledged Christians don’t all believe God will “speak to them”. Expecting to hear God talk audibly isn’t an intellectual thing to do.
If God is speaking to me through my mind, how on earth can I tell if it’s him or just my own thoughts? Later on I ended up going to churches who didn’t seem to believe that God could speak to them personally like that, but he would speak to them through The Bible or life events. Woohoo for keeping hold of my belief!
After high school I went to university to study earth science. For the first few years I went away from church completely, and I enjoyed it! I pretty much lived a non-Christian life, hanging out with non-Christian friends all the time, partying etc. Back then I still believed in God, but I was just happy with what I was doing. I moved towns to go to uni, so that meant finding another church. I did visit one church a couple of times, but they seemed a bit creepy and cultish, so that put me off finding another one.
Last I checked, partying and hanging with non-Christians doesn’t disqualify you from Christianity.
Me thinks the Convert’s conscience bothered him.
Creepy, cultish church people are not an intellectual reason for leaving the faith.
After a few years, life took a bit of a downturn. There were issues going on in my family, and some of the people I lived with were not very nice either (I was flatting). My grades at uni were OK, but everything else wasn’t. One of my old friends got in touch with me to hang out. He was a Christian but he really went off the rails a few years ago with drugs and alcohol. But now? He seemed to have turned his life around for the better. He invited me to his church, and I enjoyed it. I would eventually end up going there regularly, and moving into a flat with him and some of his friends. Being able to live with people who were actually my friends was great, and I enjoyed being part of a community of Christian people again. Life really seemed to be going better at that point. I began to think, maybe I should try this God thing again.
Hallelujah! An old friend who turned his life around for the better! Jesus is a magic spell that makes everything super-great.
Time to try “this God thing”… Because the last people he encountered were some super-nice Christian folks.
What do you think will happen to “this God thing” when we hit another downturn? This is what happens when you gauge Christianity’s value by your current level of happiness.
Life was mostly good, but I ended up living with one guy who was a bit of a dick. He took his Bible pretty seriously, but he seemed to have some over the top views on things, like he believed you shouldn’t buy or sell things on a Saturday. That would be OK on it’s own, but he felt the need to push his beliefs on everyone else, and be arrogant which really annoyed me. I’m not sure if it was him, or something else, but I started looking up atheist videos on Youtube.
Many of these videos were satirical of The Bible and Christians, in a lighthearted matter, but they had a point to them. I started to re-read parts of The Bible and realised how absurd a lot of it was. When you look at something with a view other than the ‘Christian lenses’ you were given, you will be amazed at what you may see differently!
He’s right about this: When you look at the world without the ‘Christian lenses’ everything looks different. That’s called ‘darkness’.
Still haven’t seen an intellectual objection yet, have you? Maybe he’ll get to that next…
I also read ‘The God Delusion’ too. Funny thing is, a number of my Christian friends and family happened to catch me with the book. I just responded with the whole ‘I was just curious” trick, it seemed to work as everyone forgot about it…
At this point, I started to have genuine doubts about the whole Christianity thing. It was odd though, instead of feeling anxious and vulnerable, I actually felt a little peace in the corner of my mind, like I was coming to an acceptance that maybe the God I believed in wasn’t real, that I didn’t have to base my life on him anymore and fight all these doubts.
Part of me WANTED to believe in God though, and like before (see Part Three), I had this attitude where I should try believing in God and see how my life goes. Over time though, it got harder as my critical thinking mind started seeing more and more problems in The Bible.
In other parts of the Bible, I found the concept of miracles and demonic possession absurd too. I had never actually come across miracles myself, but many other people claimed they happened all the time. But there was NEVER reliable, convincing evidence that these things truly happened. It always seemed to happen in remote third world countries though, funny that!
There’s not much to a faith that demands to witness a miraculous event. The hard heart will figure out a way discredit it anyway.
Yeah! Those people in other countries are morons because they’re poor and dirty. High-five for rich university students!
I struggled to believe how an all knowing, all loving God would create something like Hell. Anyone who didn’t believe in Jesus and have him as their personal lord and savior would suffer in Hell for eternity. It didn’t matter what life you lived apart from Jesus. How on earth can a God like that be remotely loving or just?
Now I consider myself a closet agnostic. Probably leaning more towards an agnostic atheist now. Some family and friends know this, but many church friends don’t and I still attend church from time to time. Eventually I will tell them all, but I want to come to terms with what I believe now, and be ready with a semi-decent explanation for what I believe. To be honest, I don’t know what I believe now, except that I don’t believe in the Christian God anymore, and I’m actually OK with that.
Closet Atheist is a coward and a fraud. If he spent the same amount of time talking to his family that he does watching atheist videos, he might actually make progress in his search for truth.
He’s willing to risk his eternal soul on a semi-decent explanation of anything other than “the Christian God”.
One Response
“Intellectual reasons,” is nearly always the path to foolishness. What we actually want to cultivate is “intellectual humility.” That is the path to wisdom. When we try to lean into our own understanding we often just become unteachable and full of pride. The rabbit hole this particular agnosticky guy is falling down is the idea that his faith is exclusively in his own hands, that what he believes determines Truth. His faith is actually in his own faith and capacity for reason, almost like a idol to self. That is why I sometimes say, “you’re a Christian if God says you’re a Christian.” Often we get lost in the moral abyss of our own reason, and we forget that relationships are a two way street, and our belief or non belief does not fully determine or shape the very nature of reality itself. This guy falsely believes he alone has the power to create God….. or to uncreate Him. Needless to say, he has that backwards and to overcome that conundrum, you simply have to surrender intellectually.